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THE 



AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 



BY 

SAMUEL E. MOFFETT 



SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS 

FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

IN THE 

Faculty of Political Science 
Columbia University 



1907 




THE AMEKICANIZATION OF CANADA 



THE 



AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 



SAMUEL E. MOFFETT 



SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS 

FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

IN THE 

Faculty of Political Science 
Columbia University 



1907 



P7oJ3 



The TJniTersity 
8 Ja '08 



^-£"130 



PREFACE 



The object of this study is to examine the development 
of the relations between the people of Canada and those of 
the United States, and to see whether their tendency has 
been towards unity or divergence. In such an investigation 
authorities have a very different value from that they would 
possess in tracing a definite line of historical research. 
Many documents that would be indispensable primary 
sources in other fields are here of little service. The study 
must be largely a matter of sidelights — of unconscious 
revelation. Mere gossip becomes often more illuminating 
than a formal official statement, and a careless newspaper 
paragraph, an advertisement, or the notebook of a flying 
tourist may illustrate some point on which blue books are 
silent. Hence the seemingly desultory character of the cita- 
tions in these pages. 

5 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



PACK 

Preface ....••••• 5 

CHAPTER I 
The People of the Continent ..... 9 

CHAPTER II 
The Progress of Govirnment . . • • • .20 

CHAPTER III 
The Silken Tie .....•• 4* 

CHAPTER IV 
Democracy ....••••• 5° 

CHAPTER V 
Means of Communication . . . • • • 5^ 

CHAPTER VI 
Land Systems .....••• 73 

CHAPTER VII 

lllADE ReLATIOI^S ....-•• 7^ 

CHAPTER VIII 
Societies ....••••• 9^ 

CHAPTER IX 
Literary Influences ....••• 99 

CHAPTER X 
Miscellaneous Factors . . • . • • .109 



Bibliography 



120 



Vita . . . . • • • • • • ^^5 



CHAPTER I 
The People of the Continent 

The bulk of the North American continent is divided into 
two almost equal parts. 

One of these parts is inhabited by about eighty-five million 
people, substantially all speaking English, or in the way to 
do so. The other has about six million people, of whom 
two thirds speak English and one third French, the French 
element tending constantly to gain on the other through 
natural increase, and the English to maintain its lead through 
immigration. 

These two halves. of the continent are separated by a 
boundary line four thousand miles long, (not including that 
of Alaska), corresponding to no natural division either of 
topography or of nationality. In some parts this line is a 
parallel of latitude ; in others it follows small and hardly identi- 
fiable rivers ; in others it takes its unmarked way through the 
middle of inland seas. The question to be considered here 
is whether this boundary is an actual fence, separating one 
people from another, or whether there is a tendency on both 
sides to ignore it, and to merge the six millions and the 
eighty-five millions together. 

When the American colonies declared their independence, 
there was no such division. Canada, then, meant what is 
now the Province of Quebec, and it was almost purely 
French. There were a few English settlers in the Maritime 
Provinces, which were not then considered parts of Canada, 
but the whole region west of the St. Lawrence Rapids was 

9 



lO THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

substantially uninhabited. From this point to the Pacific 
Ocean the continent was absolutely one. A hunter might 
have started at the mouth of the Ohio and worked his way 
to the Arctic Ocean without ever noticing anything but the 
weather to remind him that he had passed from one country 
to another. The difiference between Canada and the United 
States then, was the difference between French and English. 
When the revolting colonists invited the Canadians to join 
them the Canadians refused, as Frenchmen, unwilling to 
associate themselves with their hereditary English enemies. 
They preferred to remain under the English King three 
thousand miles away rather than to join their EngHsh neigh- 
bors with whom they had been colliding in reciprocal scalp- 
ing expeditions for a hundred years. 

Had matters remained in this condition, the British con- 
nection with Canada could hardly have outlasted the War of 
1 8 12. But the end of the Revolution brought the first of a 
long series of American mistakes through which that con- 
nection has been maintained to the present time. The op- 
pression of the Tories in the States created two new provinces, 
inhabited by an energetic EngHsh population, and gave the 
infant commonwealths an anti-American bias that has not 
been entirely overcome to this day. It was this new hostile 
United Empire Loyalist population created by American 
blunders that gave the British generals the backing without 
which they could have had no success in the War of 1812. 
The number of these exiles that entered the provinces that 
now formed part of the Canadian dominion is estimated at 
forty thousand.' The settlement of New Brunswick was 
almost entirely United Empire Loyalist. The Loyalist 
refugees reinforced the small English population of Nova 
Scotia and definitely settled the long-fought issue whether 

' Introduction to Canada Census of 1871, vol. iv, pp. xxxviii-xlii. 



THE PEOPLE OF THE CONTINENT j i 

the Acadian peninsula should be English or French. They 
took possession of the vacant spaces of Quebec/ But for 
their coming the British possessions in North America 
would have consisted of a wilderness with a little oasis of a 
hundred thousand French Canadians on the St. Lawrence, 
and a smaller group of about fifteen thousand people of 
mixed nationalities, half of them Americans, in Acadia. 
The settlement of the great Canadian West, including 
Ontario, when it came, would inevitably have been accom- 
plished by the same stream of migration that filled the 
empty spaces of the Mississippi Valley, and there would 
have been no difference in population or sentiment between 
Ontario and Michigan. Canada would then have remained 
as it always had been before, another name for Quebec, and 
the idea of a continental Canadian Dominion would never 
have entered any human mind. 

For generations the American stream of migration was 
diverted from Canada, but a Canadian stream was turned 
toward the United States. In 1850, 147,711 persons of 
Canadian birth were living south of the border — about one- 
sixteenth of the number of people living in the British pos- 
sessions at the same time. In i860 the Canadian-born pop- 
ulation of the United States had increased to 249,970, a gain 
of 76 per cent., while the general population of the Union 
was increasing at the rate of 35.6 per cent., and that of the 
British provinces at about 33.6. In 1870 there were 493,464 
Canadians in the United States, an increase of 97.4 per cent, 
for the decade against 22.6 per cent, for the population of 

' " In 1784 the whole littoral of the River St. Lawrence, from Lake St. Francis 
to Lake Ontario, the shores of Lake Ontario as far as and including the Bay of 
Quinte, the neighborhood of the town of Niagara, then called Newark, and part 
of the shores of the Detroit river, were colonized by about 10,000 United Empire 
Loyalists, who, assisted by Government aid, took possession of land which had 
been laid out for their reception." Introduction to Canada Census, 1871, vol. iv, 
p. xlii. 



12 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

the Republic as a whole, and 16.2 per cent, for that of the 
British colonies, now united in the Dominion of Canada. 
The figures for the next three decades were : 

Canadian-born General General 

Population Increase Increase in Increase in 

United States. per cent. United States. Canada. 

1880 717.157 45-3 30-1 17-2 

1890 980,938 36.7 24.9 11.7 

1900 1,181,255 20.4 20.9' II. I ' 

• In each case the population of Canada has had to be taken 
nine months later than that of the United States on account 
of the difference in the time of taking the census. 

While the population of the Republic was a little more than 
tripling in fifty years, and that of Canada was being multi- 
plied by less than two and a half, the little Canada south of 
the boundary line saw the number of its inhabitants multi- 
plied by eight. Of all the living persons of Canadian birth 
in 1900, more than one-fifth were settled in the United 
States. 

But if the statement stopped there it would be incomplete. 
In addition to the native Canadians in the United States in 
1900, there were 527,301 persons of American birth but with 
both parents Canadian. There were also 425,617 with 
Canadian fathers and American mothers, and 344,470 with 
Canadian mothers and American fathers. Thus there were 
in all 2,480,613 persons in the United States of at least half 
Canadian blood, which is more than half the number of simi- 
lar stock in Canada. 

Massachusetts had 516,379 persons of Canadian stock in 
1900, and Michigan 407,999. Among all the Provinces and 
States of the North American continent, Massachusetts was 
third in its population of Canadian blood, and Boston was 
the third Canadian city. Classifying the States and Provinces 
of the continent according to their Canadian population in 



THE PEOPLE OF THE CONTINENT 



13 



1900-1901, without regard to the international boundary- 
line, we find that those strongest in that element rank in the 
following order : 

1. Ontario 1,858,787 

2. Quebec 1,560,190 

3. Massachusetts 516,379 

4. Nova Scotia 435>i72 

5. Michigan 407»999 

6. New Brunswick 313,178 

7. New York 226,506 

8. Manitoba 180,859 

9. Maine 133.885 

10. Minnesota 1 14,547 

11. Illinois 114,456 

12. British Columbia 99,6i2 

13. Prince Edward Island 99,006 

14. New Hampshire 97,933 

15. Wisconsin 80,766 

16. Rhode Island 67,397 

17. CaUfornia 64,806 

18. Vermont 62,386 

19. Connecticut 525678 

20. Iowa 52,623 

il. Ohio 46,747 

22. Assiniboia 38,686 

23. Pennsylvania 35»385 

24. Alberta 35»366 

25. Unorganized territories and Yukon 33,476 

26. Kansas 29,094 

27. Nebraska 27,372 

28. Missouri i 26,367 

29. Montana 24,638 

30. Colorado 21,492 

31. Oregon 17,863 

32. Saskatchewan . • • 1 7,483 

It must be noted that there is a slight discrepancy in the 
comparisons, owing to the fact that the Canadian census does 
not give statistics of parentage. This makes it necessary to 
confine the figures for Canada to native Canadians. The 
difference is not material, however, since the number of per- 
sons domiciled in Canada, with Canadian parents, but not 



14 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

born in the country themselves, is a negligible quantity in 
such comparisons as these. In fact we might take the total 
population of the Canadian Provinces without materially 
altering the relations. 

In density of Canadian population, ignoring all other ele- 
ments, Massachusetts stands first, far exceeding any province 
of Canada, and Rhode Island second. 

The relative rank of the various Provinces and States pre- 
viously named on this basis is : 

Canadian Population 
per square mile 

1. Massachusetts 64.2 

2. Rhode Island 64 

3. Prince Edward Island 45-36 

4. Nova Scotia 20.6 

5. New Brunswick 11.2 

6. Connecticut 10.9 

7. New Hampshire 10.8 

8. Ontario 8.4 

9. Michigan 7.1 

10. Vermont 6.8 

11. New York 4.8 

12. Quebec 4.5 

13. Maine 4.4 

14. Manitoba 2.8 

15. Illinois 2,0 

16. Wisconsin 1.4 

1 7. Minnesota i .4 

18. Ohio 1. 1 

19. Iowa 94 

20. Pennsylvania 78 

21. Assiniboia 43 

22. California 41 

23. Missiouri 38 

24. Kansas 36 

25. Nebraska 35 

26. Alberta 34 

27. British Columbia .27 

28. Colorado 20 

29. Oregon 19 

30. Saskatchewan 17 

31. Montana 16 

32. Unorganized Canadian Territories and Yukon 01 



THE PEOPLE OF THE CONTINENT 15 

Classified in the same way, the principal Canadian cities 
in 1900-1901 were: 

1. Montreal ^ 267,730 

2. Toronto 208,040 

3. Boston 84,336 

4. Quebec 66,231 

5. Chicago 64,615 

6. Ottawa 49)7i8 

7. Detroit 44)592 

8. New York 40,400 

9. Halifax "^ 40,000 

10. Hamilton, Ont 39j07o 

11. St. John's, New Brunswick - 36,000 

12. Fall River, Mass 35>45 1 

13. Lowell, Mass. 29,895 

14. Winnipeg 26,35 1 

15. Cambridge, Mass 26,045 

16. Manchester, N. H 23,164 

Since the Canadian census gives statistics of nationality 
only by electoral districts, which do not always coincide with 
city boundaries, it is necessary here to give Montreal and 
Toronto an advantage in the comparison by taking their 
total population, and to use approximate figures for Halifax 
and St. John. The net result of the exhibit is that of the 
sixteen cities with over 20,000 inhabitants of Canadian stock, 
eight are in Canada and eight in the United States. 

In six American cities of over 25,000 inhabitants each, the 
Canadian population is larger than the American, and in 
several others it is almost as large. In 1900 Fall River, 
Massachusetts, had 14,300 native inhabitants born of Amer- 
ican or unknown parents, and 32,334 with both parents 
Canadians. Holyoke had 7,636 of American and 11,805 of 
Canadian parentage; Lawrence 10,467 and 11,500 of Amer- 
ican and Canadian respectively; Lowell, 20,828 and 24,928; 
Manchester, New Hampshire, 15,324 and 20,309; Woon- 

* Total population. '•' Approximate. 



1 6 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

socket, Rhode Island, 4,623 and 14.192. In all these places, 
except Lawrence, the French Canadian element alone greatly 
exceeded the American, and there it fell very little short. 

Thus Canada from the point of view of nationality is very dif- 
ferent from Canada as a political unit. Greater Canada — the 
home of the Canadian people — reaches down to Long Island 
Sound, westward south of the Great Lakes, and on to the 
Pacific Coast. The present international boundary cuts this 
territory into two. Fully half of the area actually settled by 
people of Canadian race is thus separated from the rest. 

Notwithstanding the remarkable vigor of the Canadian 
people, and especially the extraordinary fertility of its French- 
speaking portion, the population of Quebec increased be- 
tween 1 89 1 and 1 901 by only about 9 per cent., while in the 
rest of the older Provinces of Canada, the population was 
stationary or decreasing. The simple explanation is found 
in the growth of the little Canada south of the line by 20.4 
per cent, between 1890 and 1900, by 36.7 per cent, in the 
decade before that, by 45.3 per cent, in the decade before 
that, and by 97.4 per cent, in the decade before that. The 
source of the Canadian population remained in the north, but 
its increase went to the south, and that increase was propor- 
tionately greater by far than that of either Canada or the 
United States as a whole. There are no accurate statistics of 
the movement of population from Canada to the United 
States, but the volume has certainly been from fifty to a hun- 
dred thousand persons annually for at least forty years. 

In the debates on the British North America Act in the 
Canadian Parliament in 1865 it was predicted that the popu- 
lation of the new Dominion would reach twelve milHons be- 
fore the end of the nineteenth century, and this expectation 
seemed reasonable. That it was disappointed, the century 
closing with less than half that number of people living north 
of the international boundary, was due chiefly to the con- 



THE PEOPLE OF THE CONTINENT ly 

stant southern diversion of Canada's gains by birth and im- 
migration. 

A striking illustration of the Canadian drift to the south- 
ward, is found in the fact that of the 16,216 persons men- 
tioned in the 1905-07 edition of "Who's Who in America" 
260 were born in Canada, while only 29 were living there at 
the time the book was published, and these twenty-nine in- 
cluded several of American birth. 

The United States Bureau of Immigration has active ac- 
counts with forty-five corporations regularly transporting 
passengers across the Canadian boundary. Its returns show 
a continuous stream of travel crossing and recrossing the 
border. There is a growing tendency to treat both coun- 
tries as one for the purpose of dealing with immigration. 
Each undertakes to sift the arrivals from Europe by restric- 
tive laws. In the year 1905, 48,718 of these aliens tried to 
reach the United States by way of Canada. To test their 
qualifications for entry, American immigration officers were 
maintained .not only on the frontier, but also at the Canadian 
seaports. The American Commissioner of Immigration at 
Montreal speaks in his report for 1905 of the cordial rela- 
tions existing between his office, the Dominion government, 
and the Canadian transportation lines, and attributes them to 
the growing feeling among citizens of Canada in general, that 
as regards the selecting of their future citizens the interests 
of the Dominion and the United States are identical.^ 

It is only recently that the Canadian southward current 
has been balanced to any marked extent by a counter cur- 
rent flowing toward the north, but it has always been inevi- 
table that the vast vacant stretches of fertile land in the 
Canadian Northwest would in time attract an American 
migration. Until the beginning of the present century the 

' Report U. S. Commissioner of Jmmi^ation, 1905, p. 70. 



1 8 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

progress of American settlement was held in with remark- 
able effectiveness by the imaginary fence of the forty-ninth 
parallel. The States touching the border on the American 
side between Lake Superior and the Pacific increased their 
population by over 2,100,000 in the twenty years between 
1880 and 1900. The territories on the Canadian side of 
that invisible line, with better land, did not gain one-tenth 
of that number of people in the same period. That meant 
simply that the American territories were filling up faster 
than the Canadian, and that from the overcrowded hives 
the old swarming process would soon be repeated. The 
movement began a few years ago. It was not premeditated, 
it was not impelled by any political design — it was simply 
the spontaneous migration of a multitude of individuals 
anxious to better their condition and restrained from doing 
so at home by the engrossment of all natural opportunities. 
When such a migration once begins in x^merica, it proceeds 
with startling celerity. When the nucleus of Oklahoma was 
opened to settlement it filled up in a single day. In three 
hours it had acquired as many inhabitants as the vast and 
wealthy province of British Columbia had gained in thirty 
years. The same experience was repeated in the case of the 
Sioux Reservation, and again in that of the Cherokee Strip, 
and on every other piece of western land whose fences have 
been suddenly thrown down. In the Canadian Northwest, 
there were hundreds of millions of acres of land inviting cul- 
tivation, with nothing but a parallel of latitude to shut them 
off from the swarming multitudes that were pushing their 
way through cordons of bayonets to find homes on Indian 
reservations of problematical value. This line could not 
remain a barrier forever. 

In 185 1 there were 56,214 persons of American birth in 
the then Province of Canada — now Quebec and Ontario. 
In 1 88 1, thirty years later, there were only 77,753 in the 



THE PEOPLE OF THE CONTINENT ig 

whole Dominion, against 717,157 Canadians in the United 
States in 1880. For the next ten years the American-born 
population of Canada remained substantially stationary. 
There were only 80,915 persons of that nativity in the 
Dominion in 1891 as compared with 980,938 inhabitants of 
Canadian birth in the United States in 1 890. The American 
northward current began to run a little more freely in the 
succeeding decade. In the calendar year 1898 there were 
9,119 declared settlers arriving in Canada from the United 
States; in 1899, 11,945, ^^^ ^^ the first six months of 1900, 
8,543. In the fiscal year 1901 there were 17,987, and the 
census of March 31 of that year showed 127,899 residents of 
American birth in the Dominion, against 1,181,255 of Cana- 
dian birth in the United States. In the fiscal year 1902 the 
number of settlers entering Canada from the Republic rose 
to 26,388, and in 1903 to 49,473. In 1904 the number of 
immigrants from the South was 45,229, and in 1905, 43,498. 
But of these American citizens formed a small minority, 
amounting only to 62,717 in ten years. Many were repatri- 
ated Canadians, and many others were immigrants from Great 
Britain and Continental Europe who had stayed for a time 
in the United States and then moved on to Canada. 



CHAPTER II 
The Progress of Government. 

The political development of Canada has been largely 
affected by its colonial position. If from the political activ- 
ities of the United States since 1867 we subtract all military 
and naval matters, except the care of the militia, all concern 
for the Monroe doctrine, and all foreign affairs except rela- 
tions with the British Empire, we shall have a state of things 
resembling that which has existed in the Dominion since its 
birth. The politics of Canada have been essentially paro- 
chial. No Canadian government has ever had to concern 
itself with the maintenance of the open door in China, the 
construction of a Panama canal, or the conclusion of peace 
between Russia and Japan. Sir John Macdonald and Sir 
Wilfrid Laurier, statesmen who, with greater opportunities, 
might have affected the destinies of the world as deeply as 
Salisbury or Roosevelt, have had to confine their activities 
to the local interests of a population smaller than that of the 
state of Pennsylvania, ' 

Nevertheless, within the limits imposed by its colonial re- 
lations, Canada has had a political development essentially 
the same as that of the United States. There has been a 
pleasant conventionality north of the line to the effect that 
the atmosphere of Canadian politics has been purer than that 
of the Republic. But there never was any real foundation 
for this theory, and little effort is made to maintain it any 
longer. Formerly politics in Canada, as in the United 
States, consisted of an attempt by one party to keep the 



THE PROGRESS OF GOVERNMENT 2 1 

offices, and of the other to get them. Gradually the prizes 
of office on both sides of the line became overshadowed by 
the profits to be gained by financial interests from the con- 
trol of the powers of government. Tarififs, subsidies, boun- 
ties and land grants in the national sphere, and the distribu- 
tion of franchises and contracts in the localities, became the 
hidden springs of political action. As this situation became 
understood the reaction against it was felt in both countries 
in the same direction. The agitation for the regulation of 
dangerous masses of capital, for the preservation of the com- 
munity's rights in franchises, and for the public ownership 
of public utilities, took hold of the Canadian and of the 
American mind at the same time. 

Substantially the only difference between Canadian and 
American politics lies in that variation in the machinery of 
government which comes from Canada's longer subjection 
to British influences. When the American colonies broke 
away from England and began an independent development, 
they embodied in a written constitution the ideas that were 
then prevalent on both sides of the ocean. They put over 
the States elective governors with many of the powers pre- 
viously exercised by the royal governors of provinces, and 
at the head of the nation they put a George III, subject to 
change every four years. While the American governors 
and Presidents, drawing their authority from the people, 
were able to retain their constitutional powers in fact as well 
as in theory, the hereditary king in England, and the royal 
governors in Canada, had to yield to the pressure of democ- 
racy. The powers of the Crown at home passed over to a 
committee of Parliament, and in due time the powers of the 
Crown's representative in Canada followed the same course. 
Responsible Cabinet government on the present English 
model now exists in the Dominion and in each of its prov- 
inces, while eighteenth-century royal government, with a 



22 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

time limit on the tenure of its executive head, exists in the 
American Union, and to a greater or less extent in each of 
its States. 

The development of free government in Canada began 
with the Constitutional Act of 179 1. By this the Province 
of Quebec was divided into the Provinces of Upper and 
Lower Canada, each with a Legislative Council and a popu- 
lar Assembly, 

The members of the Legislative Council were to be ap- 
pointed for life by the Crown, through the Governor, or 
Lieutenant-Governor. 

The prevaiHng desire among the ruling classes in England 
to reproduce British conditions in Canada was manifested in 
a provision authorizing the creation of a Canadian peerage, 
with hereditary seats in the Council. This plan, which was 
proposed by Pitt and favored by Burke, was carried against 
the opposition of Fox. ^ 

The members of the Assembly were to be elected by land- 
owners or house-owners. 

The Governor was to have the power to fix the time and 
place for holding each session of the Legislature. 

The Council and Assembly were to meet at least once a 
year, and the term of the Assembly was to be four years, 
subject to be sooner prorogued or dissolved by the Governor 
or Lieutenant-Governor. 

Bills might be signed or vetoed by the Governor or 
Lieutenant-Governor, or reserved for the royal pleasure. 

Any bill signed by the Governor or Lieutenant-Governor 
might be disallowed by the Crown within two years, becom- 
ing void from the date of notification. 

No bill reserved for the royal pleasure was to go into 
effect until the assent of the Crown had been received. 

Authority was given to the Crown to endow " a Protestant 

' Houston, Constiltdional Documents of Canada, p. 146, note 5. 



THE PROGRESS OF GOVERNMENT 



23 



clergy" (meaning an Anglican clergy) with land, and the 
Governor or Lieutenant-Governor was to have power to 
present ministers of the Church of England to benefices. 
The Governor's right of endowment was abolished sixty 
years later by the Canadian Parliament. 

All lands in Upper Canada were to be granted in free and 
common socage in the English manner. 

Thus Canada was endowed with a purely English consti- 
tution. It was handed down ready-made by the British 
Parliament, and any resemblances that might be found in it 
to American institutions were only such as sprang from the 
common origin of the English and American people. The 
election of members by districts was a natural device for a 
new country with no historic electoral divisions, but no 
attempt was made to copy the system, established by the 
Constitution of the United States just before, of apportion- 
ing seats according to population. It was provided that 
there should be not less than sixteen members in all for 
Upper Canada and fifty for Lower Canada, but subject to 
that requirement the Governors might distribute the mem- 
bership of the Assemblies as they pleased. Nor was there 
any provision for an apportionment regulated by law. 

Under this constitution the people of Canada had nearly 
half a century of practice in self-government of a very limited 
sort. The only change made in the organic law before the 
disturbances of 1837 was a slight liberalization of the rule of 
naturalization in 1830. In the original act it had been pro- 
vided that persons of foreign birth should not be eligible to 
serve in the Councils or Assemblies or qualified to vote at 
legislative elections unless they had been naturalized by the 
British Parliament. The amendment of 1830 extended the 
privilege in Lower Canada to those naturalized by the Legis- 
lature of that Province, but required all acts of naturalization 
to be reserved for the royal pleasure.^ 

^ Constitutional Act Amendment Act, 11 Geo. IV and i William IV, c. 53. 



24 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

But the institutions established by the Act of 1791 failed 
to meet the needs of the Canadian people. The system 
worked with increasing friction, until in 1837 it broke down 
amid disorders that compelled the suspension of the constitu- 
tion and the temporary subjection of the country to the un- 
checked rule of the representative of the Crown. Lord Dur- 
ham was sent over in 1838, as Governor-in-Chief of the 
Canadas and High Commissioner, with almost despotic 
powers. The illuminating report that bears his name told 
an astonishing tale of Canadian destitution of the most 
ordinary benefits of civilized government. The failure was 
especially complete in Lower Canada. There were no mu- 
nicipal institutions ; there was no provision for public edu- 
cation ; the administration of justice was a burlesque and the 
roads were so wretched or so totally lacking that when the 
people of the Lower Canadian townships near the American 
border wished to hold meetings they were accustomed to 
cross over into Vermont, and make use as far as possible of 
the highways built by American enterprise. ' Throughout 
his report Lord Durham is continually comparing Canadian 
and American conditions to the disadvantage of the former, 
and dwelling sorrowfully upon " the striking contrast which 
is presented between the American and the British sides of 
the frontier line in respect to every sign of productive indus- 
try, increasing wealth, and progressive civilization." ^ 

In the Maritime Provinces, he observes, " their scanty 
population exhibits, in most portions of them, an aspect of 
poverty, backwardness and stagnation ; and wherever a 
better state of things is visible, the improvement is generally 
to be ascribed to the influx of American settlers or capital- 
ists." 3 The Reformers of Upper Canada, according to Lord 

^ Lord Durham's Report, Dutton edition, p. 151. '^ Ibid., p. 150. 

' Ibid,, p. 142. 



THE PROGRESS OF GOVERNMENT 25 

Durham, professed to desire to make the colonial constitu- 
tion " an exact transcript" of that of Great Britain. "It 
cannot be doubted, however," he added, " that there were 
many of the party who wished to assimilate the institutions 
of the Province rather to those of the United States than to 
those of the mother country." ^ 

This was hardly surprising, for in his own recommenda- 
tions for reform American experience plays a most import- 
ant part. 

Lord Durham proposed a legislative union of the two 
Canadas with responsible government. He advised the 
ultimate inclusion of the Maritime Provinces in this union, 
but this part of the plan did not appeal to the people of that 
region. The legislature of Nova Scotia objected to it on the 
ground, among others, that " its tendency would be to sepa- 
rate the Colonies from the parent State by imbuing the 
rising generation with a fondness of electoral institutions to 
an extent inconsistent with the British constitution." ^ But 
New Brunswick had already practically secured responsible 
government in 1837 ^"^^ Nova Scotia obtained it in 1840. 

The substance of Lord Durham's recommendations for 
Canada was embodied in the Union Act of 1840 (3 & 4 
Vict., cap. 35.) By this statute. Upper and Lower Canada 
were reunited under the name of the Province of Canada, 
whose laws were to be made by a Legislative Council and 
Assembly. The members of the Council were to be ap- 
pointed by the Governor for hfe, and the resignation of a 
Councillor was permitted. Such permission had not been 
granted by the Act of 1791, although a Councillor could 
vacate his place by living out of the Province for two years. 
The Speaker of the Council was to be appointed and re- 

' Lord Durham's Report, Button edition, p. 108. 

' Charles R. Tuttle, Short History of the Dominion of Canada, p. 320, 



26 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

moved by the Governor. Ten members of the Council out 
of a minimum membership of twenty were to be necessary 
for a quorum. 

Twenty members were to be required for a quorum in the 
Assembly. No provision for a quorum had been made in 
the Act of 1 79 1. The old apportionment was to continue, 
with amendments specified in the Act, until changed by a 
new law which was to require a two-thirds vote of the entire 
membership of the Council and Assembly. Writs for elec- 
tions were to be issued by the Governor within fourteen days 
after summoning the Assembly, and returnable within fifty 
days. None but landholders to the value of ;i^500 were to 
be eligible to the Assembly. The times and places for hold- 
ing the sessions of the Legislature were to be fixed by the 
Governor, and could be changed at his discretion. 

The Council and Assembly were to meet at least once a year,, 
and the Assembly was to last four years, subject to be sooner 
prorogued or dissolved by the Governor. Bills might be 
signed or vetoed by the Governor or reserved for the royal 
pleasure. Bills signed might be disallowed by the Crown 
within two years, becoming void from the date of notifica- 
tion. No bill reserved for the royal pleasure was to go 
into effect until the Crown's assent had been communicated 
to the Legislature or proclaimed by the Governor. All the 
legislative records were to be in the English language. The 
Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, and certain members of the 
Executive Council were to constitute a Court of Appeals, as 
previously in the separate Provinces. Appropriation and tax 
bills were to originate in the Assembly. No such provision 
had existed previously. 

The influence of American example, or of general New 
World conditions, is observed here in several points. Pitt's 
hereditary Councillors have been quietly dropped, although 
the Council still remains appointive for life. A demand for 



THE PROGRESS OF GOVERNMENT 



27 



elective Councillors had been one of the grounds of the in- 
surrection of 1837, and a weak attempt was made in Parlia- 
ment to embody this innovation in the law, but the spirit 
of democracy was not yet vigorous enough for that. The 
Enghsh rule that a member of the Upper House cannot 
rid himself of his responsibilities, is replaced by permis- 
sion for Councillors to resign. Provision is made for a 
quorum, which in the Upper House comes much nearer to 
the American rule of a majority in the Senate, than to the 
English three in the House of Lords. In the Assembly the 
quoruni more nearly follows the proportion of the member- 
ship required in the British House of Commons. The 
apportionment of constituencies for the Assembly is taken 
out of the hands of the Governor and made a matter of 
statute law, as in the United States. The provision requir- 
ing appropriation and tax bills to originate in the Assembly 
must be considered a direct offshoot of British parliamentary 
practice, rather than an imitation of the United States, for 
while American revenue bills must originate in the House, 
the Senate shares the right to initiate appropriation bills — 
a right not exercised, however, in the case of the great 
regular appropriations. The Governor was nominally en- 
dowed with the power of selecting the capital and moving it 
about the country at his pleasure — a power which the Gov- 
ernor of each province had possessed under the Act of 1791 
— but this power was really exercised by the Legislature, 
which moved the capital from Kingston to Montreal and then 
alternately to Toronto and Quebec, finally submitting the 
selection of a permanent capital to the arbitration of Queen 
Victoria, who named Ottawa in 1858.' 

By the Union Act Amendment Act of 1848 (11 & 12 
Vict., cap, 56) the requirement that the legislative records 
should be in the English language was repealed. 

^Houston, Constitutional Documents of Canada, p. 183, note. 



28 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

The Union Act Amendment Act of 1854 (17 & 18 Vict, 
cap. 118) gave authority to the Legislature to alter the com- 
position of the Legislative Council, to fix the number of its 
members, and the mode of their appointment or election, 
and to provide for the separate dissolution of the Council 
and Assembly, on condition that any bill for such purposes 
should be reserved for the royal pleasure. The requirement 
that certain bills passed by the Legislature of Canada should 
be laid before the Imperial Parliament was abolished. In 
accordance with the authority given by this act, the Legis- 
lative Council was made elective in 1856, with 48 members 
elected by districts for eight-year terms, twelve retiring 
every two years. (Canadian Statutes, 19 & 20 Vict., cap. 
140.) The Union Act Amendment Act of 1859 (22 & 23 
Vict., cap. 10), authorized the Legislature to provide for the 
appointment or election of the speaker of the Legislative 
Council whose selection had previously been intrusted to the 
Governor. Under this authority the Legislature in i860 
directed that the Council should elect its speaker. Canada 
was now provided with a Legislature which, if not strictly 
on the American pattern, was much nearer to it than any- 
thing known at first. 

The plan of governing French and English Canada as a 
single province proved unworkable. For a time the rule 
was observed of refraining from passing any measure affect- 
ing either section without the votes of a majority of the 
members from that section, as well as of the whole body. 
But in time this compromise broke down, and Upper 
Canada, complaining that the French Canadians were over- 
represented, angrily demanded representation by popula- 
tion. A crisis was at hand when a conference met at Char- 
lottetown, in September, 1864, to consider the question of a 
union among the Maritime Provinces. This was Canada's 
opportunity. She sent eight delegates to Charlottetown, 



THE PROGRESS OF GOVERNMENT 



29 



who proposed that the Maritime union be expanded to take 
in Canada. The conference adjourned to Quebec, where it 
met on October 10. 

In this historic gathering there were thirty-three mem- 
bers — twelve from Canada, five from Nova Scotia, seven 
from New Brunswick, seven from Prince Edward Island, 
and two from Newfoundland.^ The Quebec Conference 
was the Philadelphia Convention of Canada. In a working 
term of eighteen days it framed sevent)'-two resolutions, 
which were approved by the Legislature of Canada, after 
long debates. The Legislatures of New Brunswick and 
Nova Scotia having agreed to the plan, the former with, and 
the latter without a popular mandate, a second conference 
was held at London in 1866, and the Quebec resolutions, 
with a few amendments, were submitted to the Imperial 
Parliament, and enacted into law without further change. 
This great statute, " the British North America Act," (30 & 
31 Vict., cap. 3, Statutes at Large), created a new nation 
stretching across the continent, and has ever since remained 
its constitution. Its preamble states that the Provinces of 
Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick have expressed 
their desire to be federally united into one Dominion " with 
a constitution similar in principle to that of the United 
Kingdom." This is described by Professor Dicey as 
"official mendacity." He adds: "If preambles were in- 
tended to express the truth, for the word ' kingdom ' ought 
to have been substituted ' States,' since it is clear that the 
Constitution of the Dominion is modeled on that of the 
Union." ^ 

" The Swiss Confederation and the Dominion of Canada," 
observes Professor Dicey in another place, " are copied 
from the American model." 3 

' Cockburn, Political Annals of Canada, 377-378. 

^Introduction to the Law of the Constitution, c. iii, pp. 152-153, edition of 1885^ 

^ Ibid., p. 127. 



30 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

By the terms of the British North America Act, Canada, 
Nova Scotia and New Brunswick were to form one Dominion 
under the name of Canada, to be divided into four Provinces 
named Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. 

A Parliament was to be established, containing a Senate 
and House of Commons, their powers not to exceed those 
of the British House of Commons. There were to be at first 
seventy-two Senators, twenty-four each from Ontario and 
Quebec, and twenty-four from the Maritime Provinces, all 
appointed by the Governor-General for life. Senators were 
to be landholders to the value of $4,000, and to be residents 
in the Province from which they were appointed. They 
were to have the privilege of resigning. The Speaker of 
the Senate was to be appointed and removed by the Gov- 
ernor-General, and fifteen Senators were to constitute a 
quorum. 

The members of the House of Commons were to be elected 
from districts, based upon a decennial census. Quebec was 
always to have sixty-five members, the representation of the 
other Provinces being adjusted to that number according to 
population. 

Bills might be signed or vetoed by the Governor-General 
or reserved for the royal pleasure. When signed, they 
might be disallowed by the Crown within two years, becom- 
ing void from the date of notification. Bills reserved for the 
royal pleasure were not to go into effect until approved by 
the Crown. All powers not assigned exclusively to the 
Provincial Legislatures were reserved to the Parhament of 
Canada, which had moreover, a long list of especially enum- 
erated subjects under its exclusive jurisdiction. 

Each Province was to be presided over by a Lieutenant- 
Governor, appointed by the Governor-General in Council, 
and holding office during his pleasure. The provisions of 
the Act respecting the Parliament of Canada with regard 



THE PROGRESS OF GOVERNMENT 



31 



to appropriation and tax bills, recommendation of money 
votes, assent to bills, disallowance of Acts, and significance 
of pleasure on bills reserved, were to apply to the legisla- 
tures of the various Provinces, with the substitution of re- 
view by the Governor-General within one year, for that by 
the Crown within two years. 

The Governor General was to appoint the Judges of the 
Superior, District and County Courts in each Province ex- 
cept those of the Courts of Probate of Nova Scotia and New 
Brunswick, 

Subsidies were to be paid by Canada to the various Prov- 
inces toward the support of their governments. 

Either the English or the French language was to be used 
in the debates and records of the Parliament of Canada and 
the Legislature of Quebec, and in judicial procedure in any 
court of Canada or Quebec. 

Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, and British Colum- 
bia were to be admitted into the Dominion by mutual agree- 
ment, and Rupert's Land and the Northwestern Territory to 
be admitted at the option of the Dominion Parliament. By 
an amendment to the British North America Act, passed 
June 29, 1 87 1, the Parliament of Canada was authorized to 
provide for the government of any territory not included in 
any Province. Another amendment, passed June 25, 1886, 
authorized the Parliament of Canada to provide for the repre- 
sentation in the Senate and House of Commons, or either of 
them, of any territories of the Dominion, not included in 
any Province. 

The British North America Act, which in form was an 
ordinary act of the Imperial Parliament, was in reality a 
federal constitution. The Quebec Conference, which con- 
structed its framework, was a true Constitutional Conven- 
tion on the American model, and the nature of its work was 



32 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

frankly recognized in the parliamentary debates at West- 
minster. The Earl of Carnarvon, Secretary for the Colo- 
nies, who had charge of the bill in the House of Lords, said 
that it represented a very careful adjustment of conflicting 
views, and that any material amendment of it in Parliament 
would be fatal to its success. 

Notwithstanding the assertion in the preamble that this 
constitution was based on that of the United Kingdom, no 
attempt was made in the discussions in the Canadian Par- 
liament to conceal the influence of American example upon 
its construction, and of the relations between Canada and 
the United States upon its genesis. The proposed union of 
the Provinces was presented as the only alternative to union 
with the Republic. Sir E. P. Tache, the Premier of Canada, 
said to the Legislative Council on February 3, 1865, in 
moving confederation upon the basis of the Quebec Reso- 
lutions : 

"If the opportunity which now presented itself were 
allowed to pass by unimproved, whether we would or would 
not, we would be forced into the American Union by 
violence, and if not by violence, would be placed upon an 
inclined plain which would carry us there insensibly. In 
either case the result would be the same. In our present 
condition we would not long continue to exist as a British 
colony." ^ 

Attorney General John A. Macdonald, who moved the 
resolutions in the Legislative Assembly three days later, 
said : 

" * * * We had the advantage of the experience of the 
United States. It is the fashion now to enlarge on the de- 
fects of the Constitution of the United States, but I am not 
one of those who look upon it as a failure. (Hear, hear.) I 

' Parliamentary Debates on Confederation, p. 6. 



THE PROGRESS OF GOVERNMENT 



33 



think and believe that it is one of the most skillfull works 
which human intelligence ever created ; is one of the most 
perfect organizations that ever governed a free people." ^ 

The French-Canadian Attorney General, G. E. Cartier, 
told the same Assembly the next day, amid mingled cheers 
and expressions of dissent : 

" The matter resolved itself into this, either we must ob- 
tain British North American Confederation or be absorbed 
in an American Confederation." ^ 

Similar ideas ran through the debates. For instance Mr. 
H. Mackenzie said on March 3 : 

"I think the union desirable, not only as a benefit to our- 
selves, but as a means of consolidating the British Empire 
on this continent, and to save us from a degrading depen- 
dency on the United States, especially as we have the means 
within ourselves of making them to a certain extent dependent 
upon us. * * * Looking at the future, I do not think it 
desirable that one government should exercise sway over 
the whole of the North American continent. (Hear, hear.) 
Nor do I think it desirable that such a government should 
be a republican government. (Hear, hear.) " 3 

This constant fear of annexation, which seemed to obsess 
all minds, was consistent with a warm admiration for the 
good features of American institutions, and a willingness to 
copy them on every fitting occasion. When George Brown 
was commending the proposed frame of government in the 
Legislative Assembly on February 8 he thought it expedient 
to say: 

" And no higher eulogy could, I think, be pronounced 
than that I heard a few weeks ago from the lips of one of 
the foremost of British statesmen, that the system of govern- 

' Parliamentary Debates on Confederation, p. 32. ^ Ibid., p. 55. 

3/W</., pp. 681,682. 



34 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

ment we proposed seemed to him a happy compound of the 
best features of the British and American Constitutions." ^ 

The constitution framed under such conditions showed 
throughout the influence of the American example. 

It created in the first place a federal system — the first 
example of such a polity within the British Empire since the 
old New England Confederation. 

The Provinces north of the boundary were the counter- 
parts of the States south of it. A general government was 
created, with executive, legislative and judicial branches. 

The greatest difference was in the constitution of the 
executive branch, which, in Canada, consisted of a Governor- 
General, appointed by the Crown, and a ministry respon- 
sible to Parliament instead of an elective president with 
heads of departments responsible to himself. Even this 
difference is more one of tacit British convention than of 
formal law. 

The Dominion Parliament is a reproduction not of the 
Imperial Parliament of Westminster but of the Congress at 
Washington. It consists of a Senate and a House of Com- 
mons. The Senate represents Provinces, although not with 
the exact equality with which the American Senate repre- 
sents States. It differs from the English House of Lords in 
that it has no hereditary element and that its members must 
live in the Provinces they represent. The substitution of 
the name Senate for that of Legislative Council illustrates 
the progress of Americanization between 1841 and 1867. 
On the other hand the abandonment of the privilege of 
election, secured in Canada Proper by the Act of 1854, and 
the return to the principle of appointment for life, might 
seem on their face to indicate a certain reaction from the too 
rapid advance of democratic principles. In reality, however, 

' Parliamentary Debates on Confederation, p. 85 . 



THE PROGRESS OF GOVERNMENT 35 

the reason for this change was different. It was made partly 
to satisfy the Maritime Provinces, which did not want an 
elective Upper House, and partly to quiet a fear that as 
Upper Canada was growing faster than the rest of the coun- 
try her people might imagine themselves entitled to a larger 
representation in the Senate if the principle of election were 
admitted.' 

The Canadian House of Commons represents population, 
the basis being regularly revised according to the returns of 
the decennial census. This is a distinctively American idea, 
the United States having been the first country in the world 
to embody in its Constitution the requirement that a census 
should be taken every ten years and that representatives 
should be apportioned according to the results. In most 
parts of Europe even now, an apportionment once made, 
stands indefinitely. To change it requires an agitation com- 
parable to that which is needed here to amend the Constitu- 
tion. In Canada, sixty-five members of the House of Com- 
mons are allotted to Quebec, and the proportion of seats to 
population so established is carried through the other Prov- 
inces. 

The Canadian Senate stands half way between the Ameri- 
can Senate and the British House of Lords. While its mem- 
bers represent Provinces, the fact that they are appointed by 
the Dominion Government and hold office for life prevents 
them from furnishing anything like an accurate reflection of 
provincial opinion. A Senator must be thirty years old, 
which is identical with the age qualification for Senators of 
the United States. He may resign his place, as American 
Senators may, and as Peers may not. Unlike Senators of 
the United States he is subject to a property qualification. 
Fifteen Senators — between a fifth and a sixth of the total 

* See the speech of Mr. Campbell in the Legislative Council, Feb. 6, 1865, ■^<"'- 
liamentary Debates on Confederation, p. 21. 



36 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

membership — constitute a quorum. This again is midway 
between the majority requirement of the American Senate, 
and the three Peers who form a quorum of the British J^ouse 
of Lords. The Speaker of the Senate is appointed by the 
Governor-General, that is to say by the Ministry, which is 
responsible to the House of Commons. In this respect the 
Upper House is really subordinate to the Lower, in striking 
contrast with its dominant position in the United States. 
The House of Commons elects its own Speaker. 

It was the intention of the Canadian constitution-makers 
that the House of Commons should be the predominant ele- 
ment in their Parliament, and that the Senate should 
serve merely to check hasty decisions, giving way when the 
popular branch reached a settled determination. It was to 
force such a compliance and avert a possible deadlock that 
power was given to the Crown to create six additional Sena- 
tors. ' The Senate now habitually accepts its constitutional 
position of subordination. 

For the length of a parliamentary term, Canada passed by 
both the United States with its two-year rule and Great 
Britain with its seven-year limit, and went to distant New 
Zealand, where Parliaments are elected for five years. The 
Governor General has the power of dissolution — another case 
in which British practice has prevailed over American. The 
quorum of twenty members in the House of Commons is 
also British, bearing an even smaller ratio to the total 
membership than the forty required in the Commons in 
England, while nearly two hundred Representatives are re- 
quired to satisfy the majority rule at Washington. A very 
important restriction on the power of Parliament which does 
not exist either in England or in America is the rule that no 

^Earl of Carnarvon in the House of Lords, Feb. 19, 1867, Hansard, 3rd ser., 
Tol. 185, p. 559. 



THE PROGRESS OF GOVERNMENT 



37 



money shall be appropriated and no taxes laid without the 
recommendation of the Governor General. 

The veto power in Canada is nominally absolute, as in 
England, instead of subject to be overruled by a two-thirds 
vote, as in America. But the American partial veto is a 
very real thing as far as it goes, while the British absolute 
veto is a phantom, which has had no substance for two hun- 
dred years. The veto power in Canada is almost as spec- 
tral as in England — not quite, however, for an Act of the 
Dominion Parliament may be constitutionally disallowed by 
the Crown if it be in direct conflict with a treaty or an Act 
of the Imperial Parliament applying directly to Canada,' 

The Senate of the United States holds its commanding 
position through its partial control over appointments and 
other executive matters, such as treaties. In Canada the 
whole executive power is under the' direct control of the 
House of Commons, which is thus much more distinctly the 
predominant partner than even the American Senate. As 
in England and America, money bills in Canada must orig- 
inate in the popular house. But this principle is carried 
farther in Canada than in the United States, for in the 
Dominion Parliament the House of Commons must originate 
not only revenue but appropriation bills, while at Washington 
special appropriations are often carried on Senate bills. The 
requirement that every appropriation or revenue bill must 
be limited to the recommendations of the Governor General 
is really in the interest of the dominant party organization. 
It is a limitation on the independent members of the House, 
not on the House itself, since the Governor General recom- 
mends anything his ministers advise, and his ministers are 
the leaders of the party which controls the Commons. 

The Dominion of Canada began its career without any 

'Bourinot, Manual of the Constitutional History of Canada, p. 156. 



38 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

federal judicial system, but the constitution gave to Parlia- 
ment power to establish such a system, and this power was 
exercised in 1875. The Canadian judiciary has one funda- 
mentally important function in common with that of the 
United States, and unknown to England. It tests the laws 
of the Federal and Provincial Parliaments by the provisions 
of the constitution, and declares them void if they transgress 
the limits laid down for them. This right of the courts, 
which seems logically implied in the working of a constitu- 
tion of definitely distributed powers, has not made its way 
among the people who live under such constitutions in Con- 
tinental Europe, but the force of American example has 
carried it naturally into Canadian practice. In the appoint- 
ment of judges centralization is carried much farther in 
Canada than in the United States. Not only the federal 
judges, but those of the Superior, District and County 
Courts in each Province, except in the case of the Courts of 
Probate in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are appointed 
by the Governor General. As in some States, such as New 
York, but unlike the rule in the United States, the judges 
of the Superior Court may be removed by the Governor 
General on address of Parliament without the necessity of 
conviction after a formal impeachment trial. 

In the United States the Federal Government has only 
such powers as are specifically granted to it and all others 
are reserved to the States or to the people. In Canada 
precisely the opposite principle prevails. There it is the 
Provinces which are confined to the specially granted powers 
and the Federal Government which is the depository of the 
unenumerated powers. But even there Canada has been 
acting on American lines. The distribution of powers in a 
Federal Government as it presented itself to the framers of 
the British North America Act, was a purely American 
problem to be settled by American experience. To the 



THE PROGRESS OF GOVERNMENT 39 

members of the Quebec Conference, meeting in 1864 in the 
midst of the Civil War, it seemed clear that the grant of the 
reserved powers to the States had given undue vigor to the 
disruptive principle of State sovereignty. They wished to 
avoid any such danger for Canada, and so they profited by 
the American warning to strengthen their central govern- 
ment. They could not know that even under the American 
Constitution the result of the Civil War would be to 
strengthen the central government quite as much as was de- 
sirable. 

In the schedules governing the distribution of functions 
between the general and the local governments the British 
North America Act is clearly an adaptation of the Constitu- 
tion of the United States, with such modifications in detail 
as experience and varying conditions suggested. In some 
cases the very words of the American Constitution are re- 
peated. Among the powers assigned respectively to the 
American Congress and the Dominion Parliament are these : 

United States. Canada. 

Constitution of the United States, British North America Act, Sec. i. 

Art. I, Sec. 8: 91: 

" To borrow money on the credit of " The borrowing of money on the 

the United States." public credit," 

" To regulate commerce with foreign " The regulation of trade and com- 

nations and among the several States, merce." 
and with the Indian tribes." 

" To establish an uniform rule of " Bankruptcy and insolrency." 

naturalization and uniform laws on the " Naturalization and aliens." 

subject of bankruptcies throughout the 
United States." 

" To coin money, regulate the value " Currency and coinage." 

thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the " Weights and measures." 

standard of weights and measures." " Legal tender." 

" To establish post offices and post " Postal service." 

roads." 



40 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

" To promote the progress of science " Patents of invention and discovery." 

and useful arts by securing for limited " Copyrights." 

times to authors and inventors the ex- 
clusive right to their respective writings 
and discoveries." 

" To raise and support armies, but no " Militia, military and naval service 

appropriation of money to that use shall and defence." 
be for a longer term than two years." 

" To provide and maintain a navy." 

"To provide for calling forth the 
militia to execute the laws of the Union, 
suppress insurrections, and repel inva- 
sion." 

The most material differences between the powers of the 
Dominion Parliament and those of the American Congress 
relate to banking, including savings-banks, interest, marriage 
and divorce, and the whole criminal law, all of which in 
Canada are controlled by the central Parliament, while 
under the American Constitution they fall wholly, or almost 
wholly, within the reserved powers of the States. In the 
Dominion, as in the Republic, a preparatory system of Terri- 
tories has been created, outside of the system of self-govern- 
ing members of the Federation. In Canada these Territories 
are represented in Parliament by Senators and members of 
the House of Commons with full voting powers, while in the 
United States they have only non-voting delegates in the 
House of Representatives. 

The Canadian constitutions, federal and provincial, are 
more flexible than the American in the matter of amend- 
ments. Although the Dominion constitution, being an Act 
of the Imperial Parliament, is nominally quite beyond the 
control of the Canadian people, their responsible govern- 
ment can really secure amendments for the asking, while it 
is a slow and arduous process for the American people to 
secure amendments to the Constitution of the United States. 



THE PROGRESS OF GOVERNMENT 41 

To amend a State constitution is easier, but still it requires 
some special formalities, including in most cases a refer- 
endum vote. In Canada the provincial constitutions may 
be amended by simple acts of the local Legislatures, except 
as to the powers of Lieutenant Governor. 

On the whole, the relations of the Canadian constitution 
to its British and American models have perhaps been fairly 
characterized by Mr. Goldwin Smith : 

" In dutiful imitation of that glorious Constitution of the 
mother country, with its division of power among kings, 
lords, and commons, which, though it really died with Wil- 
liam III, still exists in devout imaginations, the Constitution 
of the Canadian Dominion has a false front of monarchy. 
* * * Passing through the false front into the real edifice 
we find that it is a federal republic after the American model, 
though with certain modifications derived partly from the 
British source. The Dominion Legislature answers to Con- 
gress, the Provincial Legislature answers to the State Legis- 
lature, the Dominion Prime Minister and Cabinet answer to 
the President and his Cabinet, the Provincial Prime Minis- 
ters and their Cabinets to the Governor and officers of 
States. The relations of the Province and the Dominion to 
each other are in the main the same as those of the State 
and the Federation. Were a Canadian Province to be 
turned at once into a State of the Union the change would 
be felt by the people only in a certain increase of self-gov- 
ernment. The political machinery would act as it does 



now. 



1 British North America Act, sec. 92. 

'Goldwin Smith, Canada and the Canadian Question, pp. i47-»58- 



CHAPTER III 
"The Silken Tie" 

An obvioas difference between Canadian and American 
conditions is found in the dependent status of Canada. 
This situation colors the whole Canadian outlook. Under 
present conditions, the Canadian can never have the simple 
directness of view of the American. He never can think of 
Canada alone ; he must always think of it in its relations to 
England. The ever-present sense of Colonial dependence 
affects different persons in different ways. Some take pride 
in their relationship to the Mistress of the Seas ; others slur 
it over ; others treat it with a suppressed undertone of re- 
sentment. At present effusive loyalty to the British connec- 
tion is the fashion in Canada ; yet the subject is one that 
seems to be getting on Canadian nerves. Everything a 
British newspaper or a British public man may say about 
Canada is eagerly read and commented upon in the Domin- 
ion, and the least trace of patronage or of unfavorable 
criticism is angrily resented. Canadian nerves are rawly 
sensitive to British opinion. When Earl Grey suggested at 
Toronto in the most deferential way that a contribution from 
Canada toward the cost of the Imperial navy would not come 
amiss, a storm of protest broke from the Canadian press. 
"We are not provoking wars," said the Hamilton Times.^ 
" We do not wish to be bound to pay for wars about the 
making of which we have no say. We shall spend our own 
defence money in our own way, after due consultation with 

1 May 6, 1905. 
42 



THE SILKEN TIE 



43 



the imperial authorities. We would rather raise wheat, 
potatoes, cattle, sheep and hogs, and make machinery and 
furniture and clothing and build houses, than cut other 
people's throats. We have no world-conquering ambitions ; 
we are a peaceful people — when let alone. But we have not 
forgotten the ties of blood and kindred ; and we have shown 
that we are not to be despised when real fighting is neces- 
sary. Don't pretend to tax us till we have a voice in the 
squandering of taxes. Don't ask us to pledge our sons as 
food for powder in wars that we might object to waging. 
Don't nag. And bear in mind that the man who orders the 
dinner is the man who gets the check. No say, no pay." 

This question of Canadian contributions to the British 
military and naval budget had been warmly discussed from 
the very foundation of the Dominion. It had been brought 
up* in the debates on the British North America Act, when 
the Colonial Secretary, the Earl of Carnarvon, said of it : 

" Again, we are told that the proportions of military 
expenditure are not fairly adjusted between the mother 
country and Canada. Well, I think that the time has 
probably come for a reconsideration of those charges, and 
to that opinion there are many in Canada who will sub- 
scribe." ^ 

Immediately after the achievement of Federation the Brit- 
ish Government relieved itself of most of the immediate cost 
of Canadian defense by withdrawing all its troops from 
Canada except the garrison of Halifax, to which was after- 
ward added a force at Esquimalt. 

In 1884, Canada furnished a contingent of about four 
hundred men to the Imperial Government for the expedition 
against the Mahdi.^ Much more substantial aid was ren- 

' Earl of Carnarvon in House of Lords, Feb. 19, 1867, Hansard, 3rd series, 
Yol. 185 p. 575. 

* Cockburn, Political Annals of Canada, p. 458. 



44 



THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 



dered in 1 899-1900 during the Boer War. But the Can- 
adians persistently refused to regard themselves as under 
any obligation to furnish any financial aid, or systematic aid 
of any sort, to the general defensive system of the empire. 
Indeed many of them, especially the French Canadians, were 
bitterly opposed to the dispatch of the contingent during the 
Boer War, and some doubt is expressed now whether the 
experiment will be repeated.' 

While Australia, New Zealand and South Africa were 
offering contributions towards the support of the British 
Navy, Canada firmly refused to contribute a cent. Her the- 
ory was that as an integral part of the empire, with a longer 
land frontier than that of any other colony, she was doing 
her share toward imperial defense when she developed her 
own resources, kept up her own militia and maintained her 
great railroad and telegraphic links in the system of intra- 
imperial communication. In pursuance of this theory of 
Canadian self-sufficiency she consented to the withdrawal of 
the last British garrison on her soil in 1905, accepting for 
herself the responsibility of defending the ports of Halifax and 
Esquimalt. The political opponents of the present Domin- 
ion Government have criticised its policy in the matter of 
imperial defense, as well as in other things, maintaining that 
it is humiliating for Canada to accept the protection of the 
British navy without helping to pay for it, but the Govern- 

' " But in all honesty I must say that, with one or two exceptions, the opinion 
I gathered in Canada last year was that England must not look to the Dominion 
to do the same thing again. The position taken up by men of all shades of pol- 
itics, Ministers of State, Western politicians, journalists, came to this : 'We helped 
you out of love, but we don't intend to be swept off our feet again. You can 
rely upon us, we will help England should she need our help in war and if we 
think her cause is just.' The significance lies in the addendum. Canada will be 
a free agent, whether she helps Britain or not. If she wants to she will; if she 
doesn't she won't. What claim has Britain on Canada?" John Foster Eraser, 
Canada as It Is, p. 267. 



" THE SILKEN TIE " 45 

ment does not seem to have suffered any loss of popularity 
on that account. When the Edinburgh Scotsman recalled 
the fact that the sentiments of kinship and loyalty had been 
as strong among the people of the thirteen revolted colonies 
as among the British colonies of the present day, and drew 
the conclusion that something more powerful than such sen- 
timents must be found to maintain the present imperial 
union, the Toronto Globe retorted with a lesson in history. 
It reminded the Scotsman that " the ministers of George III 
were not satisfied with intangible attachments," but that 
"the fatal idea struck somebody that it would be clever to 
make America help to pay a part of the debt" for Britain's 
costly wars. " The sentiments of kinship and loyalty were 
eventually killed by compelling the Colonies to make con- 
tributions to the expenditures of the mother country over 
which they had no control," and now " contemporaneously 
with the present-day movement for the consolidation of the 
empire come these complaints from the mother land, that 
the colonies are not bearing their share of the imperial bur- 
dens." The G/ode asks its Scotch contemporary whether it 
does not perceive some analogy between the two situations.' 
The inability of Englishmen to realize that Canada has not 
an Arctic cHmate is a standing grievance to the Dominion. 
Kipling's "Our Lady of the Snows" has never been for- 
given, and every similar slip on the part of an English writer 
or public man is sure to draw a shower of angry recrimina- 
tions. The remark of a Liberal candidate for Parliament in 
West Aberdeenshire that the harbors of Canada were frozen 
in winter was the text for a number of scornful sermons 
upon British ignorance. The fact that Lord Minto, formerly 
Governor General of Canada, had himself and his family 
photographed in London swathed in furs, was taken as a. 

1 Toronto Globe, June 30, 1905. 



46 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

direct insult to the Dominion. Such costumes, the Winnepeg 
Tribune angrily asserted, " would be worn in Canada only at 
a fancy-dress skating carnival — and even then, they would 
be found so uncomfortable that one turn around the rink 
would be as effective as a Turkish bath." " Governors 
General are not supposed to be of any real use to the coun- 
try," the Tribune added, " but Canada has a right to expect 
that they will control themselves sufficiently to avoid injur- 
ing the land from which they draw a fat salary." ' 

While Canada is effusively proud of her British connection 
in the abstract, the consensus of testimony is that the 
Englishman in the concrete is not as popular in the Dominion 
as the American. In the Northwest especially, the Ameri- 
can immigrant, adaptable and really identical with the Cana- 
dian, is vastly preferred to the English immigrant, who is 
inclined to overlook the glorious possibilities of the new 
land in the shock of the discovery that he has to pay ten 
cents on the frontier for a glass of beer he could get at home 
for three half-pence. 

Nor is this prejudice against the arriving Englishman new. 
English immigrants complained of it in the early part of the 
last century. Lord Durham took notice of it, as a grievance 
full grown, in that all-seeing Report of his in 1839, saying: 

" Besides those causes of complaint which are common to 
the whole of the Colony, the British settlers have many 
peculiar to themselves. * * * They complain that while the 
Canadians are desirous of having British capital and labor 
brought into the Colony, by means of which their fields may 
be cultivated, and the value of their unsettled possessions 
increased, they refuse to make the Colony really attractive 
to British skill and British capitalists. They say that an 
Englishman, emigrating to Upper Canada, is practically as 

^ Winnepeg Tribune, Aug, 28, 1905. 



" THE SILKEN TIE " 47 

much an alien in that British Colony as he would be if he 
were to emigrate to the United States. * * * His English 
qualifications avail him little or nothing. He cannot, if a 
surgeon, licensed to act in England, practice without the 
license of a Board of Examiners in the Province. If an 
attorney he has to submit to an apprenticeship of five years 
before he is allowed to practice. * * * In some of the new 
states of America, on the contrary, especially in Illinois, an 
individual may practice as a surgeon or lawyer almost imme- 
diately on his arrival in the country, and he has every right 
of citizenship after a residence of six months in the state. 
An Englishman is, therefore, in effect less an alien in a for- 
eign country than in one which forms a part of the British 
Empire." ' 

Mr. Goldwin Smith, writing over half a century after Lord 
Durham, found the same situation existmg, and said of it : 

" The notion that an Englishman enjoys a preference in 
Canada is pleasant but not well founded. He is rather apt 
to be an object of jealousy. Anything like favor shown to 
him gives umbrage. The appointment of three English 
professors in Toronto University roused a feeling which lin- 
gered long." ^ 

Mr. Smith expressly excepted Manitoba and the new set- 
tlements in the Northwest from this description, explaining 
that " there all alike are newcomers, and no one has to en- 
counter any jealousy or prejudice whatever." But it does 
not take long in those regions to convert the newcomer into 
an old-timer, loftily contemptuous or fiercely jealous of still 
later arrivals. Mr. John Foster Eraser, writing in 1905, 
fourteen years later than Mr. Smith, finds that " Englishmen 
as a rule are not welcomed in Winnipeg either by employers 
or by artisans." " The employers dislike him because he 

'^ Lord Durham' s Report, p. 122. 

* Goldwin Smith, Canada and the Canadian Question, p. 52. 



48 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

brings his trade unionism with him, and EngHshmen are the 
leaders in all strikes." "The workmen themselves don't 
welcome him, because their cry is: ' Winnipeg for the Win- 
nipeggers, Canada for the Canadians, and to Gehenna with 
the unspeakable Englishman.' " ' Mr. Eraser heard on all 
hands that the American was the best of all immigrants to 
Canada. On the other hand, the 5/. ^o/in Telegraph, com- 
menting upon Mr. Eraser's volume, observes satirically that, 
" Canadians might never suspect how coarse, ignorant, con- 
ceited and withal amusing they are if talented Englishmen 
did not come out occasionally and write books about them." ^ 

The refusal of the British Government to admit Canadian 
live cattle to the United Kingdom has been a source of pro- 
longed bitterness in the Dominion. The essence of thou- 
sands of resentful opinions was expressed by a member of 
the Canadian House of Commons, Mr. Robert Bickerdike, of 
Montreal, when he said : " I think that I know old John Bull 
probably as well as any other member in this House. I have 
been doing business with him for over thirty years, and I 
would venture to say that there is not a particle of sentiment 
in any of his dealings. John Bull would buy from a Hotten- 
tot just as readily as from loyal Canada." 3 

The withdrawal of the British garrisons from Halifax and 
Vancouver, leaving no connection between Canada and Great 
Britain except the shadowy authority of the Crown, was wit- 
nessed by Canadians with varying emotions. Some saw in 
it merely a graceful recognition of Canada's emergence from 
tutelage into an equal partnership in the Empire, but to 
others it was ominous of a weakening of the bonds between 
the mother and daughter lands. The Canadian Senator 
Domville, wrote to the British Navy League : " We regret 
exceedingly over here that the navy and army have with- 

^John Foster Fraser, Canada as It Is, pp. 111-112. 'May, 1905. 

' Ottawa Citizen, Sept. 7, 1905. 



THE SILKEN TIE' 



49 



drawn, and by some it is thought it may be the beginning of 
an end, severing, as it were, the last link between Canada 
and the old country. I am afraid in England they do not 
fully recognize what Canada's future will be." ^ 

Commenting upon several recent acts of the British Gov- 
ernment, the Halifax Herald soon afterward observed, " No 
one in this country, we presume, wishes to think, or would 
probably dare say, that Great Britain has at the present 
moment any actual intention of withdrawing from this con- 
tinent, where her flag still floats over at least as much terri- 
tory as that of any other sovereign state. But if such were 
Britain's known intention, some of the things her government 
and people have been doing would be more intelligible and 
easily understood." "^ 

" It cannot be denied," says the St. John Star in the 
course of a plea for the Chamberlain policy of imperial 
preference, " that at the present time Canada is not drawing 
closer to the mother land. Rather are the ties unraveling. 
Canada guarding her own gates and dreaming of the con- 
struction of her own navy is by no means so dependent upon 
Great Britain as when she relied solely upon the mother for 
protection." ^ 

The truth is that loyalty to the British connection is 
rapidly changing its meaning for Canadians. It used to 
mean loyalty to England, and in that sense Canada, with 
her swiftly-developing consciousness of nationality and 
power, is steadily outgrowing it. The French Canadians 
never had it. Canadians of all kinds are ceasing to regard 
themselves as the people of a British colony. They are 
citizens of an allied nation. Their loyalty is no longer to 
England, but to the British Empire, of which they consider 
themselves equal members, with the confident expectation 
that before very long they will be first. 

"^Halifax Herald, May 13, 1905. ''■Ibid., May 30, 1905. 

' St. John Star, Dec. 27, 1905. 



CHAPTER IV 

DEMOCRACY 

The original organization of Canadian society was aristo- 
cratic. In the French period the King's chief officials and 
the great land-owners formed an imitation noblesse whose 
supremacy was humbly recognized by the mass of the people. 
Among the English-speaking immigrants who settled the 
waste lands after the American Revolution the United Em- 
pire Loyalists were strongly predisposed to aristocratic ideas. 
But the process of developing a new country under a free 
government is not favorable to the persistence of such habits 
of mind. Aristocracy implies a leisure class, and there never 
has been a leisure class in Canada. The atmosphere of the 
American continent is at least as potent a leveler north as 
south of the international boundary. Although there are a 
few Canadian knights and baronets — some of them, like Sir 
William Van Home and Sir Thomas Shaughnessy, of Ameri- 
can birth — and a Canadian was even created a baron a few 
years ago, Canadian society on the whole is even more 
democratic than that of the United States. The viceregal 
court of Ottawa is an exotic which is admired by some of 
the people and laughed at by others, but is not felt by any 
of them to be really their own. " The genius of the Con- 
tinent rejected etiquette, as it had rejected Pitt's proffered 
boon of a hereditary peerage," ^ said Goldwin Smith. The 
attempt to introduce a few of the elementary regulations of 
English society into the state entertainments at Rideau Hall 
has always been resented. When the Marquis of Lome 

^ Canada and the Canadian Question, p. 154. 
50 



DEMOCRACY 5 1 

went to Canada as Governor General in 1878 Ottawa had a 
total population of about thirty thousand men, women and 
children, of all classes. Of these twelve or thirteen hun- 
dred, comprising at least one-tenth of the entire adult popu- 
lation, were considered socially eligible for the viceregal re- 
ceptions and entitled to invitations. The fashionable society 
of the capital, all of whose members the Governor General 
and his wife were expected to entertain, was described by a 
chronicler of the time as including not only Senators, mem- 
bers of the House of Commons and prominent visitors, but 
" local judges, doctors, lawyers, civil servants, shopkeepers, 
butchers, bakers and tradesmen of every quality." ' On a 
corresponding scale of inclusiveness there would be, not 
"Four Hundred," but four hundred thousand aristocrats 
in New York. The question whether the Canadian social 
atmosphere was American or British was tested when 
this hospitable society came into contact with the daughter 
of Queen Victoria and her husband, the descendant of the 
Dukes of Argyll. " It unfortunately came to pass," remarks 
the chronicler just quoted, " that shortly after the arrival of 
the new governor, certain regulations were published which 
seemed to verify the forecast that Rideau Hall was to be 
converted into a court, but their excellencies had the good 
sense to return to the old fashion after they saw that the in- 
novation had begun to provoke general ridicule." ^ 

The British Government had taken the trouble to draw up 
an elaborate table of precedence for Canada, beginning with 
the Governor General and going down by thirty-one grada- 
tions, through the Lieutenant Governors of Provinces, the 
Archbishops and Bishops, the members of the Cabinet and 
the rest of the official hierarchy to members of the provincial 
assemblies and retired judges. ^ The Parliaments, both Do- 

' J. E. Collins, Canada under the Administration of Lord Lome, p. 309. 
* Collins,.^. 325. 5 Burke's Peerage, 1901, p. 1875. 



52 



THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 



minion and provincial, are opened with the state of West- 
minster. They have their speeches from the Throne, and 
their humble Addresses in response. They have their Gov- 
ernment and Opposition Benches, and the solemn, if empty 
dignity of the Federal Senate as well as that of the Legisla- 
tive Council of Quebec, is reinforced by the inspiring pres- 
ence of a Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod. Mayors of 
Canadian cities are styled " Your Worship." Ofificial reports 
are still reverently submitted to " His Excellency the Right 
Honorable Sir Albert Henry George, Earl Grey, Viscount 
Howick, Baron Grey of Howick, in the county of North- 
umberland, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom and a 
Baronet; Knight Grand Cross of the Most Distinguished 
Order of Saint Michael and Saint George, etc., etc.. Gov- 
ernor General of Canada," and the Minister thus addressing 
humble memorials, which are really orders, to a potentate 
who must do as he is told, signs himself, 
" I have the honor to be, 
My Lord 

Your Excellency's obedient servant." 
Nevertheless Canadian dignities and dignitaries find it im- 
possible to get themselves taken seriously.' 

^ For example, to quote one expression out of many of the same kind : 

" Red tape requires that more gold lace should be in evidence in Canada at all 
State functions. This is a silly business. The less gold lace and the fewer tin 
swords there are in evidence in this democratic country the better for everybody. 

" Cocked hats, feathers and gold lace are out of place in the Dominion. Men 
who take pride in appearing in their uniforms make themselves ridiculous. One 
of our lieutenant governors made a laughingstock of himself at the opening of 
the last session of parliament, and yet he was merely more correct than the rest 
of the dignitaries present on that occasion. 

"It is a subject for congratulation that at the last State dinner only one deputy 
minister appeared in uniform. No doubt that one most reluctantly donned his 
gaudy dress, and did it only because he thought it the proper thing to do. The 
dress of an ' ordinary citizen ' should be quite good enough for even a minister, 
• " This gold lace business and Canadian titles are, as Goldwin Smith said a few 
years ago, a fit subject for a Canadian Thackeray. A Book of Canadian Snobs 
would make most entertaining reading." Ottawa Free Press, Nov. 24, 1905. 



DEMOCRACY 53 

The aristocracy of Canada, as of the United States, is one 
of wealth, and great fortunes are so much scarcer on the 
Canadian than on the American side of the Hne that their 
influence upon social standards is much less. 

When the British fleet under Prince Louis of Battenberg 
visited Canadian waters in the autumn of 1905 it was received 
with an enthusiastic homage that seemed to have suffered no 
impairment from the taint of American irreverence. But after 
its departure, even courtesy to guests and loyalty to the royal 
house of Britain could not entirely suppress all ebullitions of 
democratic impatience. " It would have been ungracious 
while Battenberg was with us," observed the Toronto Sun on 
Sept. 26, " to say a word that could have been deemed dis- 
courteous. But now that he is gone we may remark that 
this excessive adulation of every sprig of royalty is more 
suitable to a title-hunting fast set than to the sensible and 
self-respecting citizen." " Citizen," it may be observed, not 
" subject." 

A correspondent in Massachusetts asked the Toronto 
World whether Canadians relished being called subjects of 
King Edward instead of British citizens. The World replied : 
" With titles and distinctions Canadians are not much con- 
cerned — they probably concern themselves less than do the 
citizens of the Republic, who are themselves badly afflicted 
with that weakness. A hereditary nobility is no more likely 
to be established in the Dominion of Canada than it is in the 
United States, and lesser honors had as lief come from the 
head of the state as be self-accorded. But after all, these 
things are of trivial importance as compared with the right 
of self-government and of free development. That right 
Canada enjoys to the full, and yields place not even to the 
Republic in respect of the democratic character of her 
government." 

The same paper ridiculed the •' crassest flummery " of 



54 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

royalty as exemplified by the " gold stick," " silver stick " 
and " lords of the bed chamber" of the King, and remarked : 
" Perhaps the greatest wonder presented in the governmental 
system of any great nation to-day is the coexistence in 
Great Britain of a closer approximation of democracy than 
can be found in either of the principal republics with such 
mediaeval nonsense as appears in the ' King's household-in- 
waiting.' " ' 

Toronto prides herself upon being the very shrine of loy- 
alty to British traditions on an irreverent continent, yet it 
supports newspapers which treat the most revered fictions 
of the British Constitution with no more respect than they 
would command in Kansas City. The Toronto Sun intimates 
that since confederation the Governor General and his pro- 
vincial lieutenants have hardly ever had anything to do in 
an official and constitutional way " which might not have 
been done by a stamp." " The case of the monarchial ele- 
ment of our Constitution," it adds, " is something like that 
of the vermicular appendix in the human frame. That for- 
mation was no doubt of use in some former stage of develop- 
ment, but its usefulness has now entirely ceased. In our 
present frame it exists only to do mischief. Some, perhaps, 
looking to the influence of the court of Ottawa on social 
character and habits, will be censorious enough to maintain 
that the parallel holds good to the end." '^ 

It is unnecessary to devote more attention to the question 
whether the Canadian social organization is democratic, 
because the fact that it is so is so obvious and so universally 
admitted that extended testimony on that point would be 
mere surplusage. Canada is as democratic as the United 
States in its relations to rank, and much more so in its rela- 

^ Toronto Sunday World, Sept. lo, 1905. 
=* Toronto Sun, Aug. 16, 1905. 



DEMOCRACY 55 

tions to wealth. " Opulence," admits Mr. Goldwin Smith, 
" even at Toronto, sometimes ventures to put a cockade in 
the coachman's hat. * * * But aristocracy is a hateful word 
to the Canadian as well as to the American. It is politically 
a word wherewith to conjure backwards." ^ 

^ Canada and the Canadian Question, p. 28. 



CHAPTER V 
Means of Communication 

The early settlements in Canada were isolated from the 
southern country. The French Canadians made use of their 
magnificent system of waterways for long and adventurous 
canoe journeys, but except in hostile raids these seldom 
brought them near any considerable centers of English pop- 
ulation. When the United Empire Loyalists laid the founda- 
tions of Upper Canada in the woods they were simply Ameri- 
cans, differing in no respect from those they had left behind 
in the States from which they had been driven. But their 
isolation, if it had been maintained, would soon have devel- 
oped a new national type. For a generation it was the 
policy of the British Government to preserve this isolation 
in every possible way. To this end it cultivated the French 
Canadian nationality in Quebec, it discouraged settlements 
near the frontier, and it tried to prevent the construction of 
roads connecting the British Provinces with the American 
States. This policy was in full vigor in 1816, when Lord 
Bathurst wrote from Downing Street (July i ) to Sir J. C. 
Sherbrooke, Governor of Lower Canada : 

" You are no doubt aware of the inquiries which have been 
made in the Province as to the practicability of leaving in a 
state of nature that part of the frontier which lies between 
Lake Champlain and Montreal. * « j must confine my- 
self, therefore, to instructing you to abstain altogether from 
making, hereafter, any grants in these districts, and to use 
every endeavor to induce those who have received grants 
56 



MEANS OF COMMUNICATION 57 

there, and have not yet proceeded to the cultivation of them, 
to accept uncleared lands in other districts more distant 
from the frontier of the United States. * * It is also 
very desirable that you should, as far as lies in your power, 
prevent the extension of roads in the direction of those par- 
ticular districts beyond the limits of that division of the Prov- 
ince referred to in the plan of the Surveyor-General as being 
generally cultivated, and if any means should present them- 
selves of letting those which have been already made, fall 
into decay, you will best comply with the views of His 
Majesty's Government, and materially contribute to the future 
security of the Province by their adoption." ' 

But at that very time the progress of invention was mak- 
ing the m.aintenance of the policy of isolation impossible. 
The first Canadian steamboat, the Frontenac, was built near 
Kingston in 181 5-16, by an American, Henry Teabout, for 
a company of local capitalists. A smaller American boat, 
the Kingston, had been launched at Sacket Harbor, just be- 
fore, and at about the same time the Walk-in-the-Water was 
built at Buffalo to ply on Lake Erie.^ Steam navigation 
made the Great Lakes a bond of union instead of a barrier 
between the two countries. The development of railroads, 
following soon after, took from the beginning an international 
character. The first Canadian railway, begun in 1832 and 
opened in 1836, ran from La Prairie on the St. Lawrence to 
St. John's on the Richelieu, a distance of nineteen miles. 
Thus it connected steam navigation on the St. Lawrence 
with that on Lake Champlain, and turned the historic war 
trail of two centuries into a highway of commerce.3 For ten 
years this remained the only railroad in Canada. The second 

' Letter quoted in Durham's Report, pp. 45-46. 

* Wm. Canniff, History of the Early Settlement of Upper Canada, pp. 600-604. 

' Roberts' History of Canada, p. 428. Report of Department of Railways and 
Canals, Ottawa, 1906, p. 14. 



58 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

line, the Northern Railway of Canada, whose first sod was 
turned by Lady Elgin, was opened in 1847.' On July 31, 
1850, a convention was held at Portland, Maine, with dele- 
gates from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, meeting dele- 
gates from the New England States, to consider means of 
connecting Halifax with Bangor, Portland and the American 
railroad system, by a line called the European and North 
American Railway, passing through St. John, New Bruns- 
wick." This line was eventually completed, but not as the 
European and North American. Part of it belongs to the 
Canadian Government's Intercolonial system, part to the 
Canadian Pacific and part to the Maine Central.3 

Comparatively few as the new arteries of communication 
were, their value was fully appreciated even then. The year 
after the Portland Convention the people of Boston in a 
jubilee lasting for three days celebrated the completion of 
the railroad and steamer lines by which they saw Canada 
and the United States drawn more closely together. The 
President of the United States was there, as well as Lord 
Elgin, the Governor General of the British Province, and 
most of the notables of America. Edward Everett delivered 
one of his characteristic orations to 3500 guests at a dinner 
on Boston Common.'* 

In 1850 there were 66 miles of railway in the provinces 
now forming the Dominion of Canada. In the next decade 
the bold outlines of the Canadian railway system were 
sketched out. Between 1852 and 1857, 1239 miles of new 
lines were opened, including 229 miles of the Great Western, 
between the Niagara and Detroit Rivers; 571 miles of the 
Grand Trunk, in addition to the Montreal and Portland 

^ Withrow, p. 128. Report of Department of Railways and Canals, 1906, p. 14. 
' Tuttle, Short History of the Dominion of Canada, p. 327. 
^Report of Department of Railways and Canals, 1906, map. 
^Letters and fournah of Lord Elgin, pp. 1 61-162. 



MEANS OF COMMUNICATION 59 

branch of 292 miles, crossing the State of Maine ; 62 miles 
of the Montreal and Plattsburg; 44 miles of the Champlain 
and St. Lawrence, and 114 miles of the Buffalo and Lake 
Huron.' These were all international lines, or at least lines 
tending to bring the interior of Canada into communication 
with the frontiers. 

In i860 the railway mileage of the British Provinces had 
risen to 2,065; i" ^^7^ *o 2,617, in 1880 to 7,194, in 1890 
to 13,151, in 1900 to 17,656, and in 1905 to 20,487. In the 
last year railways crossed, or connected at, the frontier 
between Canada and the United States at forty-two different 
points.'' There is not a single Province or Territory of the 
Dominion adjacent to the United States which is not directly 
connected with the neighboring parts of the Republic by 
rail. Even the frozen territory of the Yukon has rail con- 
nection with Alaska. 

Thirty years ago every railroad in the United States and 
Canada ran on its own time. Travelers were required to 
keep track of over a hundred different standards, varying by 
as much as five hours. A passenger going from Halifax to 
Chicago had to set his watch seven times.3 

The movement for a unified system of reckoning began 
simultaneously on both sides of the border. The plan of 
counting by meridians one hour apart was proposed inde- 
pendently by Professor Cleveland Abbe, of the United States 
Signal Service, in a report to the American Metrological 
Society, and by Sandford Fleming, Chief Engineer of the 
Canadian Pacific Railroad, in a paper read before the Cana- 

* Canadian Almanac, 1857, p. 30. Report of Department of Railways and 
Canals, 1906, p. 14. 

* Report of Department of Railways and Canals, 1906, p. 14 and map. 

' Sandford Fleming, Time Reckoning and the Selection oj a Prime Meridian, 
Proceedings of the Canadian Institute, Toronto, 1879. 



6o THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

dian Institute/ Both of these bodies passed resolutions in 
1879 urging uniformity of time throughout the United States 
and Canada, On June 15, 1881 the American Society of 
Civil Engineers held its convention at Montreal, the first it 
had ever held outside of the United States, and Mr. Fleming 
read a paper urging the adoption of the unified system. He 
was sent as a delegate representing both the United States 
and Canada to the International Geographical Congress at 
Venice in the same year and there read another address on 
the same subject. Most of the railroads of the Republic and 
of the Dominion put the hour-meridian system into effect 
simultaneously on November 18, 1883, thus jointly institu- 
ting a reform which has since been followed by the majority 
of the civilized nations of the world. The time system of 
the United States and Canada now divides the North Amer- 
ican continent into longitudinal belts, taking no account of 
the international boundary. In each belt the time is one 
hour slower than in the next one to the east of it, and one 
hour faster than in the next one to the west. The Canadian 
Pacific and the American transcontinental lines all run on 
Mountain time where they cross the one hundred and fifth 
meridian, and all run on Pacific time when they cross the 
one hundred and twentieth. The example of the railroads 
has been followed by the people, so that in the important 
matter of the time schedules that regulate every act of their 
daily lives, the two countries have become one. 

The unifying influence of the railroads does not stop here. 
The entire Canadian railroad system is purely American. The 
engines, the ordinary passenger cars, the sleepers, the dining 
cars, and the freight cars, are all exactly like those used on 
American lines and entirely different from those of England 

^ Address by Dr. F. A. P. Barnard, Delegate from the United States, before the 
Association for the Reform an d Codification of the Law of Nations, Cologne, 
Aug., 1 88 1. 



MEANS OF COMMUNICATION 6 1 

or the Continent of Europe. The standard gauge is used 
throughout the continent and the rolHng stock of American 
and Canadian roads is mutually interchangeable. So is the 
personnel. An English engineer, guard, train-dispatcher, 
or general manager would have to serve an apprenticeship 
before undertaking the corresponding duties in any part of 
the North American Continent, but Canadian railroad men 
can and do take positions on American roads at a day's 
notice, and vice versa. Mr. James J. Hill, one of the greatest 
of American railroad magnates, is of Canadian birth, while 
Sir William Van Home, Chairman, and Sir Thomas Shaugh- 
nessy, President, of the Canadian Pacific and Mr. Charles M. 
Hays, General Manager of the Grand Trunk of Canada and 
head of the new transcontinental Hne, the Grand Trunk 
Pacific, were born in the United States. 

Each traffic territory has its railroad " association," and in 
marking off these territories, both countries are treated as 
one. Canadian roads are represented in the Buffalo Freight 
Committee, the Buffalo Railway Passenger Committee, the 
Buffalo Westbound Passenger Committee, the Central Freight 
Association, the Central Passenger Association, the Chicago 
Freight Committee, the Chicago Railroad Association, the 
General Manager's Association of Chicago, the General 
Superintendent's Association of Chicago, the Michigan Pas- 
senger Association, the New England Passenger Association, 
the Niagara Frontier Summer Rate Committee, the Northern 
Mileage Ticket Bureau, the Transcontinental Freight Bureau, 
the Transcontinental Passenger Association and the Trunk 
Line Association. In connection with the railroads Canadian 
and American lake and river steamer lines are associated in 
the Executive Committee of Passenger Steamboat Lines, the 
Association of Lake Lines, the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence 
River Rate Committee and the International Water Lines 
Passenger Association. The various operating officials of 



62 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

the transportation lines are also organized for mutual im- 
provement in bodies with both Canadian and American 
membership. Such are the American Association of Dining 
Car Superintendents, the American Association of General 
Baggage Agents, the American Association of Local Freight 
Agents' Associations, the American Association of Traveling 
Passenger Agents, the American Railway Engineering and 
Maintenance of Way Association, and the American Rail- 
way Master Mechanics' Association. These bodies hold 
their annual conventions sometimes in American and some- 
times in Canadian cities. ^ 

The principal railroad systems of Canada and of the north- 
ern belt of the United States lap indifferently over each other 
and over the international boundary. The Canadian Pacific 
taps American territory at both ends, and an indispensable 
part of its business is the transportation of American pas- 
sengers and freight. The Northern Pacific and the Great 
Northern have pushed their feeders into the domain of the 
Canadian Pacific and the Canadian Northern, and all four 
have battled for the trade of Manitoba and the Canadian 
Northwestern Provinces. The " Soo " Line runs from St. 
Paul and Minneapolis partly through American and partly 
through Canadian territory to Montreal in connection with 
the Canadian Pacific, and there connects with roads to Port- 
land, Boston and New York. The Grand Trunk of Canada 
finds the best part of its business in the trade between Chicago 
and Buffalo. The Michigan Central and the Wabash run 
through trains between New York and the Western cities of 
the United States, crossing the Niagara River, traversing the 
Ontario Peninsula, and returning to American territory at 
Detroit. 

The Great Northern, an American system created by a 

^ OfiScial Railway Guide. 



MEANS OF COMMUNICATION 63 

Canadian-born American citizen, Mr. James J. Hill, taps the 
Dominion at several points and is now building a transconti- 
nental line across Canada.^ The published descriptions of 
this project foreshadow the most complex system of feeders 
and of traffic circulation among Canadian and American 
points that any corporation has ever undertaken. A large 
majority of the mileage and over three-quarters of the busi- 
ness of all railroads of Canada are included in international 
systems. 

In the settlement of the Canadian Northwest the first out- 
lets to civilization were opened through American territory. 
The pioneer traders in the Red River region brought in goods 
from the United States by ox-carts. The Hudson Bay Com- 
pany took in a consignment overland from St. Paul in 1859, 
and two years later put a small steamer, the Pioneer, in ser- 
vice on the Red River, plying between Fort Abercrombie, 
Minnesota, and Fort Garry, now Winnipeg.^ 

Other steamers followed. The first railroad between 
Winnipeg and the rest of the world was opened to St. Paul, 
December 3, 1878.3 This was seven years before Winnipeg 
was connected by rail with Eastern Canada, which the Can- 
adian Pacific finally accomplished in 1885.4 When the Can- 
adian Pacific did come in, it came with a charter of mono- 
poly privileges which forbade not only parallel competing 
lines but even the construction of any new connections with 
the American frontier. But these restrictions aroused so 
much angry resentment and so much dangerous political 
agitation among the people of Manitoba that they were 
abolished in 1888.5 

^ See a letter from Mr, Hill to the Winnipeg Board of Tnade in the New York 
Times, April 8, 1906. 
* Alexander Begg, History of the Norihwest, vol. i, pp. 324-325. 
^ Ibid., vol. ii, p. 328. * Ibid., vol. iii, p. 107. 

*Cockburn, Political Annals of Canada, p. 467. 



64 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

On the Pacific Coast, of course, all the early communica- 
tions of British Columbia were with the adjacent parts of the 
United States, and this condition was not altered until the 
opening of the Canadian Pacific. 

Along with the development of the railroad and steam 
navigation systems which, soon after the middle of the nine- 
teenth century, had knit the previously isolated settlements 
of Canada into intimate connection with the United States, a 
third system was evolved — the telegraph. As a telegraph 
line accompanied every railroad, the entire network of rails 
was duplicated by a corresponding network of electric wires, 
and as there were many telegraph lines where there were no 
railways the meshes of this net were even closer than those of 
the other. In 1 904 there were 3 7,48 1 miles of commercial tel- 
egraph line in Canada against 19,431 miles of railroad, and in 
the combined systems of Canada and the United States there 
were 264,624 miles of telegraph to 230,505 miles of rail.^ 
The American telegraph lines, which originally belonged to 
small local companies, were gradually consolidated until the 
great bulk of the business was in the hands of a single cor- 
poration, the Western Union. A similar development pro- 
ceeded in Canada, The Western Union now owns practically 
the entire telegraph system of the Maritime Provinces, which, 
from this point of view, are parts of the New England States. 
West of Quebec the business is divided between the Great 
Northwestern Telegraph Company, which is affiliated with 
the Western Union, and the Canadian Pacific, an interna- 
tional corporation. In telegraph traftic arrangements the 
whole continent is treated as a unit, and the international 
boundary line has no existence. 

To these intricately interlaced strands of communication 
by steam navigation, railroad and telegraph there was soon 

1 Statistical Year-Book of Canada, 1904, pp. 449, 640 and 643. Poor's Man- 
ual of Railroads, 1905, p. v. 



MEANS OF COMMUNICATION 65 

added a fourth. In 1877 Alexander Graham Bell estab- 
lished the first commercial telephone line in the world. The 
system spread with magical rapidity over the North Amer- 
ican continent and soon far outstripped the telegraph in its 
mileage of wire and its volume of business. In 1904 the 
Bell lines alone had a greater mileage in the United States 
than all systems combined had in all the rest of the world. 
In 1904 there were 214,405 miles of telephone wire in 
Canada, of which 94,314 miles belonged to the Bell system. 
The Bell lines in the United States had 3,958,891 miles of 
wire — over three times the wire mileage of the Western 
Union Telegraph Company. The principal Canadian long- 
distance telephone lines belong to the Bell Telephone Com- 
pany of Canada, which is one of the subsidiary companies of 
the American Telephone and Telegraph Company of the 
United States. An examination of the official map of this 
company's system discloses a most astonishing network of 
lines, extending from the Bay of Fundy to San Diego, from 
British Columbia to Florida, and from Lake Winnipeg to the 
Gulf of Mexico. The peculiarity of this system as it afTects 
Canada is that the different sections of the Dominion are all 
in direct telephonic communication with the United States, 
but not with each other. New Brunswick can talk directly 
with Maine, but not with Quebec except through Maine, 
New Hampshire and Vermont. Quebec and Ontario are 
connected with each other, although not so closely as they 
are with the adjoining American States, but they are entirely 
isolated from the Maritime Provinces on one side and from 
Manitoba on the other. Manitoba is in easy communication 
with Minnesota and North Dakota, but is separated by a 
telephonic blank from Ontario and British Columbia. Half 
a dozen towns in British Columbia can telephone down the 
Pacific Coast all the way to San Diego, but they have no 
connection with any other part of Canada. Indeed all the 



66 THE AMERICAS I ZATIOS OF CAS ADA 

five long-distance telephone lines of British Columbia itself 
cross the border into Washington, and not one of them has 
any connection u-ith any other except through the American 
telephone system/ The growth of the Bell telephone system 
has been paralleled by that of the independent companies, 
and in its annual convention at Chicago in June, 1906, the 
National Interstate Telephone Association changed its name 
to the International Independent Telephone Association of 
America in order to cover the Canadian lines. 

And now there is a fifth system of communication which 
promises before long to rival and perhaps to surpass any of 
the others. The first mile of electric railroad in Canada was 
laid in connection with the Toronto Exposition in 1885.' 
From this has developed a system which in 1905 comprised 
793 miles of electric road. Up to the present time little of 
this is actually international. The only line that has crossed 
the border thus far is the one that makes two crossings on 
the Lower Niagara River and carries 150,000 passengers a 
month in the summer months from Canada into the United 
States. But the sj-stems on both sides of the border are 
approaching at various points the stage of contact which will 
weld them into one. A fast electric line has been planned 
from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Seattle. Two of the 
greatest long-distance electric railway centres in the United 
States, Detroit and Buffalo, are on the Canadian border, and 
there, as at other points, nothing is wanting to complete 
connections but the actual crossing of the cars over rivers. 
Electric traction is growing so rapidly that it promises soon 
to duplicate or surpass the extent of the steam railroads. 

*See B^ isned b^ tbe Ameiican Telephone and Tel^rzph Co. in 1904, Sia- 
tistical Year-Book of Canada, Report of Department of Raikcays and Canals, 
and Poor's Manual of Railroad:, Some of tbe facts here represented hare been 
obtained \fj posonal inqiniy from the Ameiican Telegraph and Td^dione Co. 
and the Weston Unioo Telegr^h Gi. 

* United States Census Special Report en EUctric Railways, I902, p. l6^ 



MEANS OF COMMUNICATION 67 

We are now in a position to see in what direction Canada 
is drawn by facilities of communication. We have seen five 
distinct systems superposed along the American border, 
laced and interlaced in a complexity so intricate that if they 
could all be shown on one map it would be impossible to 
disentangle the international boundary line from the maze. 
To these there should be added a sixth, the ordinary 
roads, traversed by a constant procession of automobiles, 
carriages, wagons, bicycles and pedestrians. The connec- 
tion between Canada and Great Britain is much simpler. It 
consists of ocean shipping, making single voyages in periods 
varying from eight days upwards, and cables transmitting 
messages at a charge for each word, including the address 
and signature, equal to the cost of an entire message from a 
Canadian city to any neighboring point in the United States. 

Finally, in connection with the various means of commu- 
nication on the American continent, there are to be added 
the postal and express services. 

In 1875, four years before joining the International Postal 
Union with its five-cent letter rate, Canada entered into an 
agreement by which Canadian letters were to go to any part 
of the United States at the Canadian domestic charge, while 
American letters were to be transmitted to any part of 
Canada at the American rate, each country' retaining all its 
own collections. 

For twenty years longer Canada continued to be foreign 
to the rest of the British Empire in postal matters, while 
attached to the United States. At last, on December 25, 
1898, the Imperial letter rate was reduced from five cents to 
two, the rate on letters from Canada to the United States 
being reduced from three cents to two a week later.^ Letters 
from the United States, being transmitted at the American 
domestic rate, had been carried for two cents since 1S83. 
^Report of the Deputy Postmaster- General^ Ottawa, 1903, p. 11. 



68 THE AMERICAN tZATION OF CANADA 

Canada has constantly been pressing for more liberal postal 
relations with the rest of the British Empire, but until very 
recently she has always had to encounter obstruction from 
the mother country. While she has been sending newspapers 
to Great Britain and many British Colonies at her own 
domestic rates, Great Britain has not reciprocated until the 
present year. American publishers have been able to send 
newspapers and magazines to Canada at a cent a pound, 
while British publishers have had to pay eight cents. This 
advantage to American periodical literature has now been 
abolished, however, for in November, 1906, the Canadian 
Government gave notice of the abrogation of the convention 
that had secured second-class privileges to American pub- 
lishers, while on April 15, 1907, it was announced that on 
May I the rate on British publications would be reduced to 
two cents, j 

The Canadian postal statistics do not analyze the general 
postal business to show what proportion that carried on with 
the United States bears to that carried on with Great Britain. 
But some light is thrown upon the subject by the returns of 
money-order transactions. For the first eight years after 
Confederation, Canada exchanged money orders with 
Great Britain and Newfoundland, but not with any other 
countries. In 1868 the orders issued in Canada and payable 
in Great Britain amounted to $389,796, and those issued in 
in Great Britain and payable in Canada to $87,437. In the 
same year orders were issued in Canada, payable in New- 
foundland to the amount of $3,321, and in Newfoundland, 
payable in Canada, to the amount of $3,142. In 1876 the 
Canadian money-order system was extended to the United 
States. In that year, of the orders issued in Canada $491,- 
363 were payable in Great Britain, $212,135 ^^ the United 
States, and $5,305 in Newfoundland, and of those payable 
in Canada $194,680 were issued in Great Britain, $156,134 



MEANS OF COMMUNICATION 69 

in the United States and $8,499 in Newfoundland. The next 
year, 1877, the United States passed Great Britain in the 
volume of orders payable in Canada, the year following 
(1878) in total amount of money order business with the 
Dominion, and in 1880 in the amount of orders received 
from Canada. In each case the lead has been maintained 
ever since. In 1884 Canada began to enter into money-order 
relations with other countries. In that year Canadian orders 
to the amount of $862,822 were payable in Great Britain, 
$1,190,852 in the United States, $5,291 in Newfoundland 
and $36,946 in the rest of the world, and orders payable in 
Canada were issued to the value of $257,738 in Great Britain, 
$959,691 in the United States, $29,150 in Newfoundland 
and $16,285 ^^ other countries. For the five years begin- 
ning with 1900 the proportions were: 

United Kingdom. United States. Newfoundland. Other Countries. 

Issued Payable Issued Payable Issued Payable Issued Payable 

in in in in in in in in 

Canada. Canada. Canada. Canada. Canada. Canada. Canada. Canada. 

1900.... $928,665 $505,757 $1,680,617 $1,804,830 $53,646 $50,512 $397,609 $109,456 

1901.... 1,023,039 519,497 2,118,29s 1,909,168 78,509 53,503 412,116 110,666 

1902.... 1,172,580 552,231 3,173,310 2,866,183 9^.364 5^)242 689,103 106,137 

1903.... 1,497,414 636,034 3,682,312 3)783.945 129,802 61,098 797. S96 123.4SI 

1904. ... 2,209,742 761,482 4,422,010 4,167,641 119,706 75,231 1,194,993 92,767* 

Between the period i ?>y6-'/J and 1904 the share of Canada's 
total external money-order business transacted with Great 
Britain declined from 59.2 to 22.7 per cent., and that with 
the United States increased from 38.5 to 65.9 per cent. 
About twice as much of this business is transacted with the 
United States as with all the rest of the world, including 
Great Britain, combined, and it may, perhaps, be fair to 
infer that other varieties of postal traffic are distributed in 
similar proportions. 

The express business in Canada is carried on chiefly by 
Canadian companies affiliated with the American express 

^ Statistical Year-Book of Canada^ 1904, pp. 548-549. 



yo THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

companies, but in some cases by the American companies 
themselves. The Northern Pacific, Great Northern and 
American Express Companies, for instance, all operate 
directly in Canada. In all cases intimate traffic arrangements 
enable goods to be easily and promptly transported between 
Canadian and American points. 

Against these various currents of communication it is hard 
for the most determined sentiment to make head. Toronto 
likes to be considered typically English, and tries in every 
way to strengthen the British connection and sharpen the 
line of cleavage between Canada and the United States. But 
when a Toronto merchant can run over to Buffalo in three 
hours by train or six hours by boat or automobile, can order 
a bill of goods by telephone in the morning and receive them 
by express the same evening, and can sit in his office and 
call up New York or send a night telegram for thirty cents 
which it would cost him three dollars and a half to cable to 
London, while it would take him three weeks to go to Eng- 
land and back, or to send a letter and receive an answer, 
even a 33^ per cent, tarifif preference fails to make his rela- 
tions with England more intimate than with America. 

The development of the railroad, telegraph and telephone 
systems has given a new importance to great cities as agents 
of assimilation. Before these systems grew up, each bit of 
country had its local centre, and the people had little com- 
munication with any other.' That St. Thomas was half way 
between Bufifalo and Detroit was then a matter of small 

' " The Province (Upper Canada) has no great centre with which all the sep- 
arate parts are connected, and which they are accustomed to follow in sentiment 
and action; nor is there that habitual intercourse between the inhabitants of dif- 
ferent parts of the country, which by diffusing through all a knowledge of the 
opinions and interests of each makes a people one and united in spite of extent 
of territory and dispersion of population. Instead of this, there are many locat 
centres, the sentiments and the interests (or at least what are fancied to be so) 
of which are distinct, and perhaps oppose(\" Lord Durham'' s Report, p. 104. 



MEANS OF COMMUNICATION 



71 



importance to its inhabitants. They seldom went to either 
place or had anything to do with either's affairs. But with 
the advent of the first railroad the whole situation was 
changed. Trains between Buffalo and Detroit passed through 
every day ; the newspapers of either Detroit or Buffalo could 
be read at the breakfast table, and a resident of St. Thomas 
could go to either place in the morning and be home the 
same evening. The telegraph came along with the railroad, 
enabling the country storekeeper to send an order to the 
city and have it filled the same day. Then followed the long- 
distance telephone and the interurban trolley car — new ten- 
tacles that helped the city to draw to itself the life of all the 
surrounding country. These influences have worked power- 
fully to bring Canada, which has few large cities of its own, 
into close relations with the cities of the United States. 

The bulk of the population of the Province of Ontario, 
comprising one-third of the entire population of the Domin- 
ion, is contained in the Ontario Peninsula, between the States 
of New York and Michigan. The people of this region are 
directly accessible to three metropolitan centres, Buffalo, 
Toronto and Detroit, and two other large cities, Cleveland 
and Toledo, are close at hand across Lake Erie. The penin- 
sula forms a wedge thrust down into the heart of the United 
States. It is connected with the rest of Canada only by a 
narrow isthmus, but it is in the direct sweep of the tides of 
American travel. The shortest railroad lines between Buf- 
falo and Detroit pass through it. Hundreds of thousands of 
Americans traverse it every year. Of the three cities that 
compete for its trade, the one belonging to Canada is the 
smallest. Through the greater part of this region the news- 
papers, either of Buffalo or of Detroit, can be read on the 
morning of pubHcation. It is to these cities that the people 
go when they wish an evening at the theatre, or to do any 
shopping of more than ordinary importance. Bright young 



72 THE AMERICANIZATION OP CANADA 

men and women, ambitious of wider careers than they can 
find in their native towns, go to Buffalo or Detroit to seek 
their fortunes, when they do not go farther, to New York or 
Chicago. In short, Buffalo and Detroit exert upon that por- 
tion of the Ontario Peninsula that lies between them the 
magnetic attraction which a metropolis always exercises upon 
its tributary country. To a lesser extent, a similar attraction 
is exerted by Duluth upon Western Ontario, by St. Paul and 
Minneapolis upon Manitoba, and by Spokane, Seattle and 
Tacoma upon British Columbia. In spite of distance. New 
York and Chicago are powerful magnets for the older parts 
of Canada, and Boston is the most powerful of all. There is 
no city in Canada which does not have to meet the competi- 
tion of a more important American city within drawing dis- 
tance of its own constituency. Halifax, St. John, Quebec 
and Montreal are all within the circles of attraction of Boston 
and New York ; Toronto must compete with Buffalo and 
Detroit; Winnipeg is within the sphere of influence of 
St. Paul and Minneapohs ; and Vancouver and Victoria 
have rivals in Seattle and Tacoma. The tariff does some- 
thing to counteract the more powerful attraction of the 
larger places, but it cannot do everything. It can not inter- 
fere with pleasure and education ; it cannot compel people 
to take local newspapers in preference to metropolitan jour- 
nals, nor can it stop the migration of ambitious youth to the 
points of greatest opportunity. A metropolis diffuses a 
potent influence on all sides. It draws in currents of life 
from all directions and sends them back transformed. As 
London has unified England, as Paris has unified France, as 
Berlin is unifying Germany, so the great American border 
cities are unifying the regions over which their attraction ex- 
tends. 



CHAPTER VI 
The Land 

There is no more fundamental characteristic of a nation 
than its system of land tenure. No other factor more pro- 
foundly influences the national character. French Canada 
was originally organized on a feudal basis.' Persons of in- 
fluence received from the King large grants of land which 
they held by faith and homage, and they sublet their estates 
in farms to tenants on various conditions of service and pay 
ment. The beginnings of such a system were observable 
in the Maritime Provinces, as in several of the colonies that 
afterward became American States. The whole of Prince 
Edward Island was given away in one day in 1767 to pro- 
prietors living in England,^ and the colony struggled for 
more than a century against the consequences of what Lord 
Durham called " that fatal error which stifled its prosperity 
in the very cradle of its existence." 3 One-seventh of the 
lands of Upper Canada were set apart in 1791 for the sup- 
port of a Protestant clergy, and immense endowments in 
Lower Canada were settled upon the Catholic priesthood. 
When the United Empire Loyalists occupied Upper Canada, 
they received land grants in the proportions of 200 acres 
each for privates, 2,000 for subalterns, 3,000 for captains, 
and 5,000 for field officers. Townships were laid out of from 

^ Parkman, The Old Regime in Canada, p. 304 et leq. 
'Bourinot, Local Government in Canada, p. 167. 
* Lord Durham^ s Report, pp. 140-141. 

73 



74 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

40,000 to 80,000 acres each." Jobbery was rampant in this 
distribution, and huge tracts fell into the hands of specula- 
tors and official rings. In Lower Canada the British Gov- 
ernors made fifty-five grants of over ten thousand acres each 
in the seven years between 1796 and 1803, Many of these 
exceeded twenty-five thousand acres and one reached 
62,621.=^ 

But the last remnants of feudalism in Quebec were ex- 
tinguished under Lord Elgin in 1854; the "clergy reserve" 
system in Upper Canada disappeared about the same time, 
and the rights of the proprietors of Prince Edward Lsland 
were bought out between 1873 and 1876. There was no 
tendency anywhere toward the development of the modern 
English system of landlord and tenant. Everywhere the 
drift was in the direction of American methods. In 1839 
Lord Durham had described the land system of the United 
States as appearing " to combine all the chief requisites of 
the greatest efficiency." " In the North American Colo- 
nies," he added, " there never has been any system." 3 But 
varied as the land titles have been in their origin, they have 
worked out in all the eastern part of the continent, Canadian 
and American alike, into one common system — that of the 
ownership of the farms by the farmers, and outside of the 
cities, the general ownership of homes by their occupants. 
Of course this system is not universal — it has importa'nt ex- 
ceptions, such as negro tenant farming in the South, but it 
gives the characteristic tone to the whole region on both 
sides of the boundary ."^ 

'Bourinot, Local Government in Canada, p. 56. Cf. Canniff's History 0/ the 
Settlement of Upper Canada, p. 62, and Ryerson's Loyalists in America, ii, p. 187. 

' Vandenvelden and Charland, Introductory Table. 

^ Lord Durham^ s Report, pp. 148-149. 

*"In this fundamental respect of yeoman proprietorship, without a landed 
gentry, the structure of society in British Canada is identical with its structure in 
the United States." Goldwin Smith, Canada and the Canadian Question, p. 27. 



THE LAND 



75 



In the West, both Canada and the United States were 
confronted by exactly the same conditions. Each country 
found itself in possession of an enormous extent of vacant 
land, to be disposed of at its pleasure. The American lands 
were settled first, and therefore it fell to the United States to 
devise the first plan for disposing of them. It divided the 
country into townships each six miles square. Each town- 
ship was subdivided into thirty-six sections of one square 
mile, or 640 acres, apiece. Homestead settlers were allowed 
to take up a quarter section, or 160 acres, each, without 
charge. When the country was still unprovided with means 
of communication corporations were tempted to build rail- 
roads through it by the offer of grants of land, consisting of 
the alternate sections for a certain number of miles on each 
side of the lines. This whole system, townships, sections, 
quarter-sections, free homesteads, railroad land subsidies and 
all, has been transplanted bodily to Canada. The settler 
from North Dakota who crosses the line into Saskatchewan 
takes up a new farm in precisely the same way in which he 
took up the one he is leaving behind. 

By the Dominion Land Act of 1872 (35 Victoria, cap. 23) 
the Northwestern lands were divided into sections, townships, 
and ranges, counted from bases and meridians, as in the 
United States, and sub-divided into half-sections, quarter, 
half-quarter and quarter-quarter sections. Two sections in 
every township in Manitoba and the Northwest Territories 
were set apart for an educational endowment. Provision 
was also made for military bounties. The unappropriated 
land was to be open to purchase at a dollar an acre, but no 
more than 640 acres were to be sold to one person. Free 
homesteads of 160 acres each were given to heads of families 
of either sex or to any males over eighteen years old after 
three years' residence. Preemption claims to an equal 
amount could be taken up adjoining the homestead at a 



76 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

dollar per acre. The Act of May 26, 1874 (37 Victoria, cap. 
14) granted twenty-five million acres to the Canadian Pacific 
Railway in alternate sections — the chief of a long list of sub- 
sidies to railroad corporations. Two years later the Act 39 
Victoria, cap, 19 authorized the system of timber-culture 
entries that has opened the door to such extensive frauds 
in the United States. 

Even in their mistakes, Canada and the United States have 
moved on parallel lines. Each had a colossal public domain 
— a heritage that could have been made under prudent man- 
agement to support the entire government and in time to 
provide benefits now undreamed-of for the people. This 
domain could have been made to solve all the problems of 
poverty and furnish the first modern example of a govern- 
ment whose operations were written on the credit instead of 
on the debit side of the popular ledger. But the United 
States chose to throw its opportunity away, and Canada is 
ollowing its example as fast as the progress of settlement 
will permit. 

This policy is arousing discontent in Canada as well as in 
the United States. The free lands in the Northwest within 
reach of transportation facilities are substantially exhausted, 
" Why should any government give away lands for nothing? " 
asks Mr. R. J. Shrimpton.' 

" The time is approaching," said the St. John Star, on 
August 26, 1905, "when the sons of the farmers who have 
borne the cost of Western development will go west and buy 
back, if they can, at a high price, portions of these lands 
from the descendants of emigrants who got the estates for 
nothing. The time is coming and even now is, when the 
nation with more land than people will be better off than 
the nation with more people than land." 

' The Monthly Review, London, Aug., 1905. 



THE LAND jj 

The lands of the Northwest not already occupied by- 
settlers are owned principally by the Canadian Pacific, the 
Canadian Northern and other railroad corporations, the 
Hudson Bay Company, and various land companies and 
private speculators. To obtain free farms in a region in- 
habited by less than one person to the square mile, it is now 
necessary, in most cases, to go at least twenty miles from a 
railroad. Thus the conditions whose existence in the United 
States has led to the migration of American farmers to 
Canada are reproducing themselves in the new land. 



CHAPTER VII 

Trade Relations 

Before the adoption of free trade by Great Britain in 1846 
the commercial relations of Canada had been governed by 
the principles of the old Colonial system. Canadian pro- 
ducts had a preference in the British markets, and British 
goods enjoyed similar favors in the markets of Canada. 
The year 1846 was memorable for the abolition of the Corn 
Laws in England, and for the enactment of the Walker Tariff 
in the United States — a measure which for the next fourteen 
years was generally regarded as the beginning of a rapid 
approach toward American free trade. Thus the dykes that 
had tended to confine Canadian commerce in British channels 
were thrown down, and at the same time the obstacles that 
had obstructed its approach to the American markets were 
removed. 

In preparation for this change the Imperial Government in 
1845 authorized the Canadian Legislature to regulate its own 
tarifif. As soon as its special privileges in the British mar- 
ket were gone, Canada promptly turned to the United States. 
In 1846 the Canadian Legislature urged the government of 
Great Britain to negotiate for the admission of Canadian 
goods to the American markets on equal terms. The pro- 
posed reciprocity was confined to natural products, but this 
limitation, the Canadians explained, was inspired solely by 
a desire to meet American wishes. Canada herself would be 
glad to have the mutual concessions made complete.^ 

^ " It has been suggested that the same principle should be extended to the 
78 



TRADE RELATIONS 



79 



In 1847 the Legislature of Canada equalized the duties on 
American and British manufactures, reducing the former from 
twelve and one-half to seven and one-half per cent, and rais- 
ing the latter from five to seven and one-half.' 

These advances met with an encouraging reception. In 
1848 Joseph Grinnell introduced a bill in Congress abolishing 
duties on Canadian raw products on condition that similar con- 
cessions should be made by Canada. The Canadian Legis- 
lature immediately passed a law with corresponding provi- 
sions.'^ The Board of Trade of Montreal, in a memorial to 
the Queen on December 18, 1848, expressed the opinion that 
the recent changes in the commercial relations of Canada had 
led to " a growing commercial intercourse with the United 
States, giving rise to an opinion, which is daily gaining 
ground on both sides of the boundary line, that the interests 
of the two countries, under the changed policy of the Impe- 
rial government, are germane to each other, and under that 
system must sooner or later be politically interwoven." 3 

These aspirations on both sides for closer commercial rela- 
tions reached their fulfillment in 1854 in the Reciprocity 

manufactures of the United States and Canada. To this Canada could have no 
objection; on the contrary, we feel persuaded it would be to our advantage, but 
it was considered unwise even to propose it, because American manufacturers 
would feel apprehensive that British fabrics might be introduced by this means 
through Canada into the United States at duties considerably lower than those 
imposed by the present American tariff. This was the only reason for not pro- 
posing that extension ; if decided, it can be obtained at any future time." Mem- 
orandum of Hon. W. N. Merritt, submitted to the U. S. Government through 
British Minister Crampton on behalf of the Governor-General of Canada. House 
Ex. Docs., 1st Sess., 31st Cong., vol. viii, no. 64, pp. 6-8. 

^Letter from the British Minister at Washington, Mr. Crampton, to Secretary 
Qayton, March 22, 1849. House Ex. Docs,, ist Sess., jisi Cong., vol. viii, no. 64, 
pp. 3-4. 

'House Ex. Docs., ist Sess ,31st Cong., vol. viii, no. 64, pp. 12-14. 

'Speech of John A. Dix in Senate, Jan. 23, 1849. House Ex. Docs., ist Sess., 
jist Con^., vol. viii, no. 64, p. 28. 



go THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

Treaty negotiated by Lord Elgin and William L. Marcy — an 
arrangement which Elgin himself frankly admitted to be prob- 
ably indispensable to the retention of Canada in the British 
Empire.' This treaty opened to Americans all sea-fishing 
rights, except that of gathering shellfish, in Canada and the 
Maritime Provinces, and gave reciprocal rights to British fish- 
ermen on the coasts of the United States north of 36 de- 
grees, north latitude. Grain, animals, meats, fish, poultry, 
eggs, hides, dairy products, ores, coal, lumber and other raw 
products were to be admitted free on both sides. Reciprocal 
rights of navigation were granted on the St, Lawrence, the 
canals and Lake Michigan. Newfoundland was to be ad- 
mitted to the privileges of this treaty, as far as practicable, at 
her option.^ 

Acts to carry the Reciprocity Treaty into effect were 
passed in the United States August 5, 1854, in Canada Sep- 
tember 23, 185^, in Prince Edward Island October 7, 1854, 
in New Brunswick November 3, 1854, in Nova Scotia De- 
cember 13, 1854, and in Newfoundland July 7, 1855.3 The 
treaty was proclaimed in force March 16, 1855, and its effects 
were immediate and decisive. Down to and including 1854, 
the trade of Canada with Great Britain exceeded that with 
the United States. Next year the proportions were reversed 
and the United States took a lead which it retained until the 
Civil War, From 1850, until the end of the reciprocity 
period, the trade of Canada proper with the two countries 
which together absorbed almost the whole of its commerce 
is summarized in these tables : 

'^Letters and Jonrnah of Lord Elgin, pp. 102-103. 
* Treaties and Conventions, pp. 449-452. 
' Haynes, Reciprocity Treaty, pp. 18-19. 



TRADE RELATIONS 



8l 



Imports to Canada. 
From Great Britain. From the United States. 
• • ;SS9,63i,92i 



1850 

1851 12,037,993 

1852 10,671,133 

1853 18,489,121 

1854 22,963,330 

1855 13.303.560 

1856 18,212,914 

1857 17.559,025 

1858... 12,286,853 

1859 14,767,872 

i860 15.839,320 

1861 17,945,570 

1862 21,089,915 

1863 20,176,964 

1864 11,878,9071 

1864-5 21,035,871 



;?6,372,494 

7,935,972 

8,477,693 

11,782,147 

15.553,098 

20,828,677 
22,704,509 
20,224,651 

15,655,550 
17,592,265 

17.258,585 
20,206,080 
22,642,860 
18,457,683 
7.952,401 ^ 
14,820,577 



Under 
Reciprocity. 



Exports from Canada. 
To Great Britain. To the United Stales. 



1850 ;?4,8o3,379 

1851 6,021,411 

1852 6,756,857 

1853 11,465,408 

1854 10,876,714 

1855 6,738,441 

1856 10,467,644 

1857 11,102,045 

1858 8,898,611 

1859 7,973.106 

i860 12,749,891 

1861 18,787,592 

1862 15,045,420 

1863 17,401,856 

1864 4,700,244 

1864-5 14,637.153 



^5,933,243 

4,917.429 

7,536,155 

10,725,455 

10,418,883 

20,002,291 
20,218,654 
14,762,641 

13,373,138 
13,586,917 
20,698,348 
16,158,374 
16,980,810 
20,910,533 
8,022,963 1 
24,213,582* 



Under 
Reciprocity. 



J 



The effect of the Reciprocity Treaty was to make Canada 



^ Six months. 

" Year-Book of British North America, 1867, p. 76. 



82 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

a willing commercial dependency of the United States. The 
Canadians learned to look southward for their best market. 
" Under the beneficent influence of that convention," says a 
recent Canadian writer, " the line between the two countries 
at their point of contact on this continent became as nearly 
as possible obliterated. Without damage to the loyalty or 
individuality of either, the two nations began, in Mr. Jay's 
words, to be again as one people. Commerce was unre- 
strained. Social and political sympathy increased. Hence 
when, a generation ago, a division between the people of the 
United States among themselves broke out into civil war, 
the sentiments of the majority of English-speaking Cana- 
dians were found to be in many respects like those of a 
Northern State. . . . What must have been the real sym- 
pathies of the vast majority of people which, out of a popu- 
lation of about three millions, sent forty thousand recruits to 
the Northern armies } It is not probable that the quota of 
native volunteers would have been much larger had the 
Provinces already been States of the Union," ' 

But the Reciprocity Treaty was not universally popular in 
the United States. From the time when Lord Elgin first 
"floated it through on a sea of champagne" it was sub- 
jected to bitter criticism. The fact that during the Civil War 
the balance of trade turned "against" the Union gave a new 
argument to those who were accustomed to think of exports 
as the only profitable part of commerce. Resentment grow- 
ing out of the course of the British Government in the war, 
and the use of the Canadian territory as a base for Confeder- 
ate raids dealt the final stroke, and the United States gave 
notice of the abrogation of the treaty. It was a blunder 
matching the expulsion of the Loyalists and the consequent 
creation of British Canada after the Revolution. Its first 

1 0. A. Howland, The New Empire, pp. 254-256. 



TRADE RELATIONS 83 

effect was to dismay the Canadians, who had learned to con- 
sider the American market essential to their existence ; its 
second was to set them to work to build up new markets 
elsewhere, and incidentally to give a powerful impetus to the 
union of the disjointed colonies in a new nation, the Dominion 
of Canada, Nevertheless the actual effects of the new policy 
upon trade were not as disastrous as might have been feared . 
The treaty terminated on March 17, 1866. In 1865, the last 
full year before the abrogation of the treaty, the domestic ex- 
ports from Canada and the Maritime Provinces to the United 
States had amounted to $27,286,874. In 1867, the first 
year after the abrogation, the same Provinces sold goods to 
the Union to the value of $25,395,835. The exports from 
the United States to the British Provinces were $22,600,174 
in 1865, and $17,401,529 in 1867.' The next year, the first 
under the Dominion, the American exports to Canada made 
up their losses, and by 1873 the volume of Canadian trade with 
the United States, each way, exceeded the figures of 1865, 
Propinquity and ease of communication did their work in spite 
of the hampering efforts of statesmen. It was the Canadian 
imports from the United States that grew with peculiar 
vigor. In 1868 Canada bought goods to the value of $37,- 
617,325 from Great Britain and only $22,660,132 worth from 
the Union. In 1873 the imports from Great Britain 
amounted to $67,996,945 — a figure never reached since, in 
spite of the stimulation of a double dose of preferential 
tariffs. In 1876, for the first time since the abrogation of 
the Reciprocity Treaty, the imports from the United States 
($43,099,880) exceeded those from Great Britain (40,479,- 
253). From that time to this, except in the three years 
1880-82 inclusive, American sales to Canada have steadily 

' Special Report on Trade between Canada and the United States, Ottawa, 
1898, pp. 252-255. 



84 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

exceeded the British. Of late years the discrepancy has 
grown enormous. It was $128,790,238 to $58,793,038 in 
1903, $143,010,578 to $61,724,616 in 1904, and $152,431,- 
626 to $60,342,704 in 1905. The growth of Canadian ex- 
ports to the United States, while large, has been much less 
than that of imports. The exports of Canadian domestic 
merchandise in 1868 were $22,387,846 to the United States 
and $17,905,808 to Great Britain, and the sales to the Re- 
public continued to exceed those to the United Kingdom 
every year until 1874. In that year the exports to Great 
Britain were $35,769,190 and those to the United States 
$30,380,556. 

From that time until the present British purchases from 
Canada have exceeded those of the United States in every 
year except 1888 and 1889. The difiference grew steadily 
year after year until in 1903 Canada sold $125,199,980 worth 
of domestic products to Great Britain, and only $67,766,367 
worth to the United States. In the past two years it has 
declined, the proportions being $110,120,892 to $66,836,885 
in 1904 and $97,114,867 to $70,426,765 in 1905.' 

In the commerce between Canada and the United States 
the " balance of trade" — that grewsome bogy of the protec- 
tionist politician — has been against Canada every year with- 
out a break since 1871, until in 1905 it reached the terrifying 
figure of $82,005,061, Both parties in the Dominion have 
striven helplessly against the incorrigible determination of 
the Canadian people to buy American goods without waiting 
for a corresponding American demand for Canadian goods. 
For many years the struggle took the form of an attempt to 
revive the system of reciprocity. 

On March 10, 1873, seven years after the abrogation of 
the reciprocal agreement with the United States, Sir Charles 

^ Report Canadian Department of Trade and Commerce, 1905, pp. 14-19. 



TRADE RELATIONS 85 

Tupper, Minister of Customs, said in response to a Board of 
Trade memorial : 

" Both Her Majesty's Government and the Government 
of Canada have availed themselves of every suitable oppor- 
tunity, since the abrogation of the Reciprocity Treaty, to 
press upon the Government of the United States the desira- 
bility of a renewal of reciprocal trade relations between the 
latter country and Canada upon a broad and liberal basis." ^ 

In 1874 Canada attempted to employ her rights to com- 
pensation for the use of her fisheries under the Treaty of 
Washington as a lever to press the American Government 
into concluding a new reciprocity treaty. Such a treaty was 
negotiated, but was not ratified by the Senate.^ 

The failure of these overtures began to turn the minds of 
Canadians toward the idea of commercial independence. In 
1876 Sir John Macdonald, then the leader of the Conserva- 
tive Opposition to the Mackenzie Government, moved a 
resolution calling for a readjustment of the tarifif which would 
*' afford fitting encouragement and protection to the strug- 
gling manufactures and industries as well as the agricultural 
products of the country." He offered a similar resolution 
the next year, following it with a popular agitation outside 
of ParHament, and on March 7, 1878, he formally launched 
his " National Policy " by moving an amendment in supply : 

" That this house is of the opinion that the welfare of 
Canada requires the adoption of a National Policy, which, by 
a judicious readjustment of the tariff, will benefit and foster 
the agricultural, the mining, the manufacturing and other 
interests of the Dominion ; that such a policy will retain in 
Canada thousands of our fellow-countrymen, now obliged to 
expatriate themselves in search of the employment denied 
them at home, will restore prosperity to our struggling in- 

1 Sessional Papers, 1873, no. 40. ^ Ibid., 1875, no. 51. 



86 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

dustries, now so sadly depressed, will prevent Canada from 
being made a sacrifice market, will encourage and develop 
an active inter-provincial trade, and moving (as it ought to 
do) in the direction of a reciprocity of tarifTs with our neigh- 
bors, so far as the varied interests of Canada may demand, 
will greatly tend to procure for this country, eventually, a 
reciprocity of trade." ' 

In the debate on this occasion Macdonald protested against 
the policy of " conciliation and humiliation " by which the 
Canadian Government had been trying to induce the Amer- 
icans to grant reciprocity. " They will not have anything 
like reciprocity of trade with us," he said, " unless we show 
them that it will be to their advantage. ... It is only by 
closing our doors and by cutting them out of our markets 
that they will open theirs to us." " 

The next year the Conservatives came into power, under 
Macdonald's leadership, and the National Policy was put into 
effect. Consistently with the declaration of its author, that 
one of its chief objects was to secure reciprocity with the 
United States, the act contained a provision that the Cana- 
dian duties on American natural products should be abol- 
ished whenever the United States took similar action with 
regard to Canadian goods. 3 But the Finance Minister re- 
marked that " the government intended to impose duties on 
a great many articles imported from these (the United 
States) which had been left on the free list since 1875 in the 
vain hope of inducing our neighbors to renew the Reci- 
procity Treaty." '^ 

Under the Macdonald Tariff the average rate of duties in- 
creased from 16.334 per cent in 1879 to 20.214 per cent in 

* Commons Debates, Can., ^th Sess., 3rd Pari., vol. i, p. 854. 

^ Commons Debates, Canada, £th Sess., ^rt/ Pari., vol. i, p. 862. 
' 32 Vict., c. 4, sec. 10. 

* McLean, Tariff History of Canada, p. 24. 



TRADE RELATIONS 87 

1880, and that on dutiable goods alone from 23.335 to 
26.078 per cent. For the moment American trade was hit 
harder than British, the imports from the United States fall- 
ing ofif from $42,170,306 to $28,193,783, while those from 
Great Britain actually increased from $30,967,778 to $33,- 
764,439. Yet the increase in duties on the goods imported 
from Great Britain was apparently larger than that on goods 
from the United States. The great difference lay in the fact 
that fully half the American products previously free of duty 
were transferred to the dutiable list, while the comparatively 
small proportion of British goods on the free list not only 
suffered no reduction but was even enlarged.^ 

The Canadian tariff was revised in 1894, and some slight 
reductions were effected. The changes were avowedly in- 
fluenced by the Wilson law passed the same year in the 
United States. A limited reciprocity was again offered. =" 
Even as late as that the feeling that the American markets 
were essential to Canada's welfare was strong, especially in 
the Liberal party. Sir Richard Cartwright expressed it in 
the debate on the Tariff Act of 1894 i^ the words : 

" I do not pretend to say that the people of this country 
are not able to maintain themselves in reasonable comfort 
without access to those markets provided they had an honest 
and economical government, but I do say that no consider- 
able prosperity ever will be obtained under existing circum- 
stances for the people of Canada until they have access to 
the markets of the United States. That fact is written by 
the finger of God in every mile of the frontier between that 
country and Canada." 3 

Sir John Thompson, for the Government, said that Canada 
had approached the Washington authorities with an offer of 

' Report of Department of Trade and Commerce, 1905, pp. 14-15- 

' Commons Debates, 4th Sess., fth Pari., 1894, p. 1506. ^ Ibid. 



gg THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

more liberal trade relations, which had not been cordially 
received.' 

In 1896 the Liberals under Mr., now Sir Wilfrid, Laurier, 
came, into power as a low-tariff party, friendly to freer trade 
relations with the United States. Their overtures were re- 
buffed, however, by the short-sighted politicians at Wash- 
ington, and they turned toward Great Britain. They made 
practically no reduction in the Macdonald general tariff, but 
in 1897 they granted a preferential rate of 25 per cent on 
certain products from such countries as might concede reci- 
procal favors. This was meant to be, and in fact was, con- 
fined to the British Empire and almost exclusively to the 
United Kingdom. In 1900 this preference was increased to 
33/^ per cent. Thus the Liberals succeeded in flanking 
their protectionist opponents by securing a certain amount 
of tariff reduction under the guise of a patriotic service to 
the Empire. But the exceptional favors granted to Great 
Britain did not avail to check the steady increase in pur- 
chases from the United States. In the fiscal year 1898, just 
before the first preference went into effect, the Canadian im- 
ports of American goods amounted to $74,824,923. The 
next year, after eleven months of discrimination in favor of 
Great Britain, the United States sold goods to Canada to the 
extent of $88,467,173. The following year the figures rose 
to $102,080,177. At the end of that year (1901) the in- 
creased British preference went into force. In 1901 the 
Canadian imports from the United States increased to $107,- 
149,325, in 1902 to $114,744,696, in 1903 to $128,790,237, 
in 1904 to $143,010,578, and in 1905 to $152,431,626. 
Meanwhile under the stimulus of the first preference the 
Canadian imports from Great Britain rose from $32,043,461 
in 1898 to $36,931,233 in 1899 and $44,279,983 in 1900. 

' Commons Debates, 4th Sess., "jth Pari., 1894, p. 1517. 



TRADE RELATIONS 89 

In 1 90 1, the first year under the increased preference, the 
imports of British goods declined to $42,022,726. In 1902 
they took a fresh start, rising to $49,022,726. In 1903 they 
went up to $58,793,038, and in 1904 to $61,724,616, butlin 
1905 they fell off again to $60,342,704. The Canadian im- 
ports from Great Britain in 1905, under a tarifif preference 
of 33^ per cent, were less by over seven millions and a-half 
than they had been in 1873 without any preference at all. 
In the same time the Canadian imports from the United 
States had more than tripled. In 1898, just before the tariff 
favors began. Great Britain had furnished 25.36 per cent of 
all Canada's imports and the United States 59.24 per cent. 
The next year, notwithstanding the preference, the share of 
Great Britain declined to 24.72 per cent, while that of the 
United States remained unchanged. In 1901, the first year 
of the increased preference, the British proportion went 
down to 24.10 and that of the United States rose to 60.30 
per cent. In 1905, after seven years of preferential favors, 
two years at 25 and five at 33^ per cent. Great Britain was 
furnishing 23.98 and the United States 60.58 per cent of the 
total imports of Canada.' 

Coincidently with the huge increase in imports from the 
United States has come an increasing dependence upon 
American trade for the money to support the Canadian 
government. Down to 1896 Canada had collected more 
revenue in duties on British than on American goods. The 
yield of the duties on British products had been, on the 
whole, declining for some years, and continued to decline 
until the duties were reduced by the first preference of 1898. 
The reduction in the rates was followed by an increase in 
revenue, and the second reduction, although seeming to 
bring a temporary decline, was followed after a year by 

* Canadian Report on Trade and Commerce, 1905, pp. 14-17. 



90 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

another increase in receipts which has kept on upon a 
moderate scale ever since. But the increase in the amount 
of duties collected on American goods was so much more 
rapid that while the charges on imports from Great Britain 
brought in $11,171,010 to the Dominion Treasury in 1905, 
the imports from the United States contributed $20,580,302. 
This was half of the entire customs revenue of the country 
and nearly 29 per cent of all the money raised by the 
Canadian Government from all sources." 

^ Report of Canadian Department of Trade and Commerce, 1905, pp. 14 and 
15. Statistical Year-Book of Canada, 1905. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Societies 

An influence that has had a marked assimilating effect has 
been that of the social, fraternal, trade, labor, professional, 
scientific, philanthropic and religious organizations whose 
jurisdiction extends over both sides of the international 
boundary. These associations have had an astonishing 
growth in the past half century. They have multiplied with 
the improvements in communication which alone have made 
it possible for members everywhere to keep in touch with 
each other, and meet in an endless succession of continental 
conventions. Their influence begins in early life. The 
schools of North America, both secular and religious, are 
conducted by teachers who exchange ideas in international 
conventions. The National Educational Association, the 
most extensive organization of its kind in the world, was 
originally a purely American ' institution, as its name still 
indicates. But soon delegates from Canada began to attend 
its gigantic annual conventions, and they are now regular 
participants in its deliberations. 

The Sunday-schools of the continent have undergone a 
similar development. The first convention of the Interna- 
tional Sunday-school Association was held in 1 895 . The elev- 
enth, representing over a hundred and fifty thousand evan- 
gelical Sunday-schools, fifteen hundred thousand teachers 
and twelve million pupils in the United States and Canada, 
met at Toronto ten years later. The scope of the Interna- 
tional Sunday-school Association is not confined to the 

91 



92 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

American continent — it takes in the entire world — but the 
United States and Canada contain a majority of all the 
schools, teachers and pupils affiliated with it, and the bulk 
of the international intercourse it promotes is between their 
representatives. 

The American college fraternity is a growth peculiar to 
this continent. Nothing more strongly difTerentiates the 
academic life of the Western world from that of Europe, and 
especially of England. This distinctively American institu- 
tion has at last struck vigorous roots in the Canadian univer- 
sities. The pioneer chapter was established by the Zeta 
Psi fraternity at the University of Toronto in 1879, and in 
1883 the same organization planted another chapter at 
McGill.' 

Four years later the first Canadian chapter of an American 
woman's Greek-letter society was founded at the University 
of Toronto by Kappa Alpha Theta, but it lived only a year. 
In 1892, a Toronto chapter of Kappa Alpha was launched 
by an enthusiastic assemblage at Ithaca, and from that time 
until the present, hardly a year has passed without the crea- 
tion of a chapter of some American fraternity in a Canadian 
college. In 1905, the University of Toronto had nine such 
chapters, McGillthe same number, the Law School of Upper 
Canada two, and four other Canadian institutions one each. 

Delta Chi, an American legal fraternity that originated at 
Cornell in 1890, held its convention in Canada for the first 
time in 1905, meeting at Toronto and electing Postmaster- 
General (now Secretary of the Treasury) Cortelyou Honor- 
ary President. "" 

In several of the great general orders the Canadian and 
American branches have gradually converged to the point of 

^ W. R. Baird, Manual of American College Fraternities, 1905, pp. 288-290. 
"^ Baird, American College Fraternities, 1906, pp. 374-376. Toronto Mail and 
Empire, June 26, 1905. 



SOCIETIES 93 

coalescence. The Supreme Grand Lodge of Odd Fellows 
has jurisdiction over the grand lodges of Ontario, Quebec, 
Manitoba and British Columbia, as well as over those of the 
various States of the Union. The Sons of Temperance treat 
all North America as one National Division and Great Britain 
and Ireland as another. The Knights of Pythias have lodges 
in American States and Canadian Provinces under a single 
general jurisdiction. 

The fraternal insurance orders which have nearly seven 
million members and do more than a third of the life insur- 
ance business of the continent are represented in the 
National Fraternal Congress, which has met annually for 
twenty years to consider questions of policy and legislation 
afifecting their interests. Canada is represented in this body, 
which held its sessions for 1906 in Montreal. 

Perhaps the most powerful of all international associations 
in their assimilating efifects are those devoted to labor. The 
process of expansion by which in the fifties local American 
unions rapidly grew to State and National stature went on 
in the next decade to include Canada. In 1869 the National 
Typographical Union, then seventeen years old and the first 
national union in the United States, changed its name to the 
" International Typographical Union," in order to take in the 
Canadian printers.^ In 1881 the "Federation of Organized 
Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada " 
was formed by a Congress held at Pittsburg. This body 
was so purely continental in spirit that it seemed to act on 
the assumption that the workers of the United States and 
Canada were already citizens of one country. It adopted a 
resolution declaring: "It behooves the representatives of 
the workers of North America in Congress assembled, to 

^ Richard T. Ely, 77^1? Labor Movement in America, pp. 57-58. Testimony of 
Sam'l B. Donnelly, President Int. Typographical Union, before the Industrial 
Commission, May 9, 1899. Report Industrial Commission, vol. vii, p. 268. 



Q4 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

adopt such measures and disseminate such principles among 
the people of our country as will unite them for all time to 
come, to secure the recognition of the rights to which they 
are entitled." ' In 1886 the Federation of Organized Trades 
and Labor developed into the American Federation of 
Labor.^ This body, with nearly two million members, had 
in March, 1906, seventy afifiHated international unions with 
jurisdiction over Canada.3 

1 Declaration of principles of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor 
Unions of the United States and Canada, adopted at the first annual session at 
Pittsburg, Nov. 15, 1881. Official Report. 

'Testimony of Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of 
Labor, before the Industrial Commission, April 18, 1889. Report of the Indwtrial 
C.omtnission, vol. vii, p. 596. 

3 Official list of organizations affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, 
March 15, 1906. The organizations extending over Canada were kindly desig- 
nated for the writer by Mr. Frank Morrison, Secretary of the Federation. They 
comprised the following unions : 

Bakery and Confectionery Workers' International Union of America. 

Barbers' International Union, Journeymen. 

Bill Posters and Billers of America. National Alliance. 

International Brotherhood of Blacksmiths. 

Brotherhood of Boiler Makers and Iron Ship Builders of America. 

International Brotherhood of Bookbinders. 

Boot and Shoe Workers' Union. 

International Union of United Brewery Workmen. 

International Brick, Tile and Terra Cotta Workers' Alliance. 

International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers. 

International Broom and Whisk Makers' Union. 

United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America. 

Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners. 

International Carriage and Wagon Workers. 

International Wood Carvers' Association of North America. 

Cigarmakers' International Union of America. 

Retail Clerks' International Protective Association. 

United Cloth Hat and Cap Makers of North America. 

Commercial Telegraphers' Union of North America. 

Coopers' International Union of North America. 

International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers of America. 

International Union of Elevator Constructors. 



SOCIETIES 95 

In addition six Canadian city Centrals and ten Canadian 

International Union of Steam Engineers. 

International Association of Fur Workers of the United States and Canada. 

United Garment Workers of America. 

Glass Bottle Blowers' Association of the United States and Canada. 

Amalgamated Glass Workers' International Association. 

International Glove Workers' Union of America. 

International Hod Carriers' and Building Laborers' Union of America. 

International Union of Journeymen Horse Shoers of United States and Canada. 

Hotel and Restaurant Employees' International Alliance and Bartenders' In- 
ternational League of America. 

International Jewelry Workers' Union of America. 

International Union of Wood, Wire and Metal Lathers. 

Shirt, Waist and Laundry Workers' International Union. 

United Brotherhood of Leather Workers on Horse Goods. 

Amalgamated Leather Workers' Union of America. 

International Longshoremen's Association. 

International Association of Machinists. 

International Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees. 

International Association of Marble Workers. 

Metal Polishers, Buffers, Platers and Brass Workers' International Union of 
North America. 

Amalgamated Sheet Metal Workers' International Alliance. 

United Mine Workers of America. 

Iron Molders' Union of North America. 

American Federation of Musicians. 

Brotherhood of Painters, Decorators and Paperhangers of America. 

United Brotherhood of Paper Makers of America. 

Pattern-Makers' League of North America. 

International Photo-Engravers' Union of North America. 

International Piano and Organ Workers' Union of America. 

International Steel and Copper Plate Printers' Union of North America. 

United Association of Plumbers, Gas Fitters, Steam Fitters and Steam Fitters' 
Helpers of the United States and Canada. 

National Brotherhood of Operative Potters. 

International Printing Pressmen's Union. 

Order of Railroad Telegraphers. 

Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees of America. 

International Seamen's Union of America. 

National Union of Shipwrights' Joiners and Caulkers of America. 

Theatrical Stage Employee's International Alliance. 

International Stereotypers and Electrotypers' Union of North America. 



96 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

local unions were connected with the Federation. One of 
the continental organizations, the Barbers' International 
Union, uses the American flag as a part of its emblem. Any 
barber shop in Canada which fails to display this symbol is 
marked as a " scab " establishment. Most Canadian barbers 
seem to bear this obligation philosophically, but the sight of 
the foreign emblem sometimes arouses bitter protests among 
their customers. 

In 1897 the "Allied Building Trades Council of America" 
was formed by the representatives of the bricklayers, car- 
penters, painters, plasterers, stone-masons, plumbers, steam 
and hot-water fitters, fresco painters, paper-hangers, tin and 
copper workers, galvanized iron workers, stone-cutters, 
structural iron workers, hoisting engineers and hod carriers. 
All these were organized on an international basis and in the 
border cities of the United States Canadian union cards were 
regularly presented by men who would work there for a time 
and then go back to Canada.'' 

The International Typographical Union held its conven- 
tion for 1905 in Toronto. The problems discussed there 
were common to the workers on both sides of the line. One 
of them was the question of serving in the militia. Both in 

Stove Mounters' International Union. 

Journeymen Tailors' Union of America. 

International Brotherhood of Teamsters. 

United Textile Workers of America. 

International Ceramic, Mosaic and Eucaustic Tile Layers and Helpers' Union. 

Tobacco Workers' International Union. 

Travellers' Goods and Leather Novelty Workers' International Union of 
America. 

International Typographical Union. 

Upholsterers' International Union of North America. 

Amalgamated Wood Workers' International Union of America. 

1 Testimony of Milford Spohn of the Legislative Committee of the National 
Building Trades Council before the Industrial Commission, April 17, 1899. ^^" 
fort Ind. Com , vol. vii, pp. 138-146. 



SOCIETIES 97 

the United States and in Canada it had been held by agita- 
tors that the citizen soldiery was under the control of capital, 
and hence that organized labor should boycott it, but for the 
seventh time the convention rejected a resolution to that 
effect. This body was welcomed to Toronto by the Premier 
of Ontario, and in opening its sessions the chairman of the 
local Committee of Arrangements remarked that " the Inter- 
national Typographical Union knew no boundaries, and that 
so far as their aims and objects were concerned, no line ex- 
isted between Canada and the United States." ' The Inter- 
national Union of Steam Engineers met at Toronto in the 
following month, and exhibited an equal solidarity of inter- 
ests. One of the resolutions adopted by its convention de- 
manded the exclusion of Chinese, Japanese and Koreans 
from the United States and Canada.^ In November, 1906, 
an American labor leader took charge of a street railroad 
strike at Hamilton, Ontario, under the general direction of 
the President of the Amalgamated Association of Street and 
Electric Railway Employees of America at Chicago, and so 
far Americanized the proceedings that a Canadian town was 
treated to the unwonted spectacle of troops fighting riotous 
mobs in its streets.^ The strike leader was ordered out of 
the country, but refused to go, standing on his rights as an 
American citizen, and the International President went to 
Hamilton to take charge of the situation in person. 

Of late some of the Canadian unions have grown restive 
under the control of American majorities, and have mani- 
fested a disposition to secede from the international organi- 
zations and manage their own affairs. This bit of reaction is 
part of the workings of the growing spirit of nationality 

^Toronto Globe, Aug. 15, 1905. 

* Ottawa Free Press, Sept. 16, 1905. 

*See Canadian papers in November, igo6, passim. 



^8 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

which is striving passionately to make Canada a self-suffic- 
ing entity, free from dependence either upon the old sover- 
eign power across the sea, or the gigantic neighbor next 
door. 



CHAPTER IX 
Literary Influences 

No less important than the influences of social admix- 
ture, of trade and of travel in forming the character of a 
people is that of the things the people read. This reading 
matter consists of newspapers, magazines and books. From 
the infancy of the nation Canada has had an able and vigor- 
ous newspaper press. It has been intensely Canadian in 
sentiment, but in everything else it has been American.' 

The Canadian journals are American in their whole tone, 
their makeup, their typography, their estimate of the value 
of news and their manner of presenting it. They patronize 
American press associations and " syndicates," and much of 
their matter in consequence is furnished by American writ- 
ers from an American standpoint. This is a cause of in- 
cessant complaint on the part of the Canadian press itself, 
but the stream of news from American sources continues to 
flow unchecked. 

" The ports of entry between Canada and the United 
States," complains the Toronto Mail and Empire (May 13, 
I905)> "are so many sluices through which Americanizing 
reading matter is pouring every day. The minds of our peo- 
ple are being saturated with social and political teaching that 
is bad for the country." The Ottawa Free Press (Sept. 20, 

* As Mr. Goldwin Smith observed fifteen years ago, "The Canadian press is, in 
the main, American, not English, in its character. It aims at the lightness, smart- 
ness and crispness of New York journalism rather than at the solidity of the Lon- 
don Times. There is an interchange of writers with New York," Goldwin 
Smith, Canada and the Canadian Question, p. 51. 

99 

tora 



lOO THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

1905), criticizes Canadians for preferring American to 
British journals. " A great deal," it remarks, " is said and 
written in Canada about British connection, the Imperial 
spirit and loyalty to the mother-land, but on our newsstands 
and through our streets the American papers with their col- 
ored supplements are exposed for sale, and find ready cus- 
tomers. They have already moulded our language, are 
shaping the character of the young, and giving us our na- 
tional ideals." La Presse, of Montreal, calls the process a 
" conquete pacifique." ' 

In 1903, the Canadian Press Association was organized, 
with a Dominion subsidy, to secure cable news from Eng- 
land free from American coloring. But the results of the 
experiment have been somewhat disappointing even in that 
restricted field, while at home the American agencies are 
still in full possession of the ground. 

The Toronto Globe (April 25, 1905), describing the 
growth of the Canadian Northwest and the improvement of 
the Western newspapers, laments " first, the scarcity of East- 
ern Canadian news in those papers, and secondly, the quite 
remarkable prominence given to United States news." It 
appears that even in towns of considerable size it was hard 
for Western Canadians to learn how the Ontario elections of 
1905 had been decided, while the result of an election in 
Maine or Vermont would have been announced soon after 
the close of the polls. ^ 

^ " Les Americains viennent mettre nos forets en couple regime. De ce bois ils 
font de la pulpe qu'ils nous retournent un peu plus tard sous forme de journaux, 
revues et magazines, que nous payons en bon argent. Des milliers de tonnes de 
mati^res imprim^es arrivent ainsi chaque jour dans le pays, penetrent dans toutes 
les villes, les campagnes, repandant partout la pens6e, les idees et le sentiment 
Am6ricain. Sans nous en apercevoir, nous devenons Americains, et un groupe 
de douaniers et quelques criminels sont aujourd 'hui les seuls a savoir qu'il y a 
quelque part une ligne de division entre le Canada et la R^publique Americaine." 
La Presse, Sept. 5, 1906, 

» Ibid. 



LITERARY INFLUENCES lOi 

The Victoria Colonist (Aug. i8, 1905) explains that "the 
daily newspaper in British Columbia is absolutely in the 
hands of the Associated Press." Hence the " frequent com- 
plaints that news of events of considerable importance oc- 
curring in Great Britain, on the Continent, or in Eastern 
Canada is entirely omitted in the press dispatches, while 
some trifling thing that took place in Philadelphia or Texas, 
without interest or value to English or Canadian readers, is 
given prominence." The Colonist sees no way out of the 
diflficulty, because the Associated Press is too great to be 
easily supplanted or diverted from its course. 

Canadian newspapers, with very few exceptions, employ 
the American instead of the English forms of spelling. They 
omit the " u " from words like " favor," " honor," " labor " 
and " armor." Some of them even go the full length of 
^' spelling reform " and say "thru," "altho," " program " and 
" cigaret." They did this before President Roosevelt tried 
to set the fashion. A Canadian paper speaks of " a hered- 
itary nobihty," where an English one would say " an." ^ 

President Roosevelt's incursion into the orthographical 
field in the summer of 1906 was abundantly criticised in the 
Canadian press, but it received rather more sympathy there 
than in the press of the United States, and infinitely more 
than in that of Great Britain. Canadian book publishers, it 
may be observed, are rather more conservative in the matter 
of spelling than the publishers of newspapers. The super- 
fluous " u " in such words as " honor," almost unknown in 
the daily press, is often in evidence in bound volumes issued 
in Canada. But the same thing may be said of books issued 
by American publishers with international connections. 

The prominence given by Canadian newspapers to Ameri- 
can news is not altogether due, as they often complain, to 

1 Toronto World, Aug. 12, 1905. 



I02 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

their dependence upon American sources of information. It 
is largely a case of supply accommodating itself to demand. 
The newspapers print what experience has taught them their 
patrons wish to read. American election returns take prece- 
dence of every other species of news, home, British or for- 
eign, in the Canadian press. Even the choice of a Mayor of 
New York in 1905 was considered sufficiently important by 
some Canadian papers to spread across the entire width of 
their first pages. La Presse, of Montreal, not only gave this 
space on the morning of the election, before there were any 
returns to print, but it published portraits of all the candi- 
dates for Mayor and District Attorney, and a complete fac- 
simile of the official ballot, with its eight columns and its 
seven emblems. The progress of the American electoral 
campaigns is followed editorially by the Canadian press with 
a care and knowledge in striking contrast with the vague im- 
pressions that serve for opinions in such English publica- 
tions as think the matter worthy of any attention at all. 

La Presse of Montreal regularly devotes several columns 
a day to " Canada in the United States." Letters from Fall 
River, Manchester, Lowell and other American centres of 
French Canadian settlement keep the race in its own home 
in touch with its offshoot in New England. The Winnipeg 
Tribune puts the abridged news of the world under four 
headings : first, " Canada ; " second, " United States ; " third, 
•• Great Britain," and fourth, " The World Outside." In a 
typical issue (Jan. 3, 1906) there were ten items under the 
first heading, twelve under the second, two under the third 
and three under the fourth. Other Canadian papers adopt 
similar classifications. Some journalists have carried on a 
crusade against what the Toronto Mail and Empire calls 
" the tide of Americanizing literature which sweeps over this 
country every day,"' but with no visible effect except to in- 

' April 29, 1905. 



LITERARY INFLUENCES 



103 



duce the Dominion Postoffice Department to restrict the 
second-class privileges of American publications in the mails. 

The National Association of Managers of Newspaper 
Circulation held its annual convention in 1905 at Toronto, 
with representatives of the American and Canadian press in 
attendance. The delegates from Toronto, Detroit, Montreal, 
Toledo, Denver and Pittsburg were able to discuss the same 
business problems as if no boundary line existed.^ 

The flippancy of the American headliner and the partial- 
ity of American newspaper writers in general for colloquial- 
ism, irreverence and slang are continental in their scope, and 
sharply distinguish both American and Canadian journalism 
from that of England. 

It would be hard to imagine an English newspaper head- 
ing an account of the impending junction of the Russian 
fleets under Admirals Rojestvensky and Nebogatoff with the 
line " Roje. and Neb. Communicate," as the Standard of St. 
Catharines, Ontario, did on May 10, 1905, following it later 
with another dispatch headed "Has Roje, Gone Down?" 
Yet that was so typical of Canadian journalism that there 
would be no trouble in matching it with hundreds of similar 
lines.^ 

* Toronto Mail and Empire, June 7, 1905. 

' As an illustration of current tendencies, consider this editorial from the lead- 
ing journal of the Dominion capital, The Ottawa Citizen, of March 15, 1906. 
" The Toronto Telegram is desperately worried over the costumes, masculine and 
feminine, at the vice-regal drawing room. List to its tale of woe : 

" ' The Ottawa imitation of a real court is to be staged with greater elaboration, 
it is to be more gorgeously costumed under the Greys than under the Mintos. 
But the Ottawa court is only an imitation and a subject of indifference to the real 
people of Canada, of amusement to the wise people of England.' 

" What have the ' real people of Canada " got to do with it anyhow ? The cos- 
tumes don't cost them a cent; the indignant ratepayer has no squeal coming; the 
horny-handed son of toil has not to pry himself loose from a plunk and we have 
not heard that anybody asked the Telegram to subscribe for any purple or laun- 
dried linen. Neither the real nor fictitious people of Canada are coerced into 



104 



THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 



The Americanization of the Canadian newspaper press 
has been stimulated of late years by the practice adopted by 
the great American journals of "syndicating" their matter, 
especially their Sunday supplements. These supplements 
are reproduced in the Canadian papers, usually on Satur- 
days, as the native Sunday paper has not taken deep root 
in the Dominion. The youths and maidens of Canada are 
brought up on the adventures of Buster Brown, Foxy 
Grandpa and the Katzenjammer Kids. They learn how 
many American heiresses have bought European titles, and 
what divorces are likely to occur in the course of the season 
at Newport. There are also colored supplements of Can- 
adian manufacture which imitate those of the American 
yellow journals as closely as possible. Besides, the Ameri- 
can papers themselves have a large circulation in Canada, 
especially on Sundays, when the supply of native literature 
of the kind is short. This process is facilitated by the fact 
that every important city in Canada except Halifax is within 
a hundred miles of the international boundary. 

In the magazine field the process of Americanization has 
been even more direct than in that of journalism. The great 
bulk of the periodical hterature read in Canada is written 
and printed in the United States. There are a few Can- 
adian magazines, and English magazines are read to some 
extent, but all these occupy an insignificant place in com- 
parison with the flood of American periodicals that flows in 
yearly increasing volume across the border. A single 
American weekly has a circulation of sixty thousand in 

attending the drawing room if they don't want to, and taken altogether, there is 
about as much sense in the Telegrarti's talk as there would be in denouncing folk 
who go to a fancy dress ball. So long as those attending the drawing room pay 
their tailors' and milliners' bills, whose funeral is it? And it might be mentioned 
incidentally that the vice-regal drawing room is a mighty fine show and well worth 
the price of admission." 



LITERARY INFLUENCES I05 

Canada, which is more than the combined circulations of all 
the Canadian magazines of general standing. At the news- 
stands in Canadian hotels American pubHcations fill the 
great bulk of the space. These facts are admitted on all 
hands, with emotions varying according to the disposition 
of the commentator.^ 

Canadian newspapers complain that for lack of a market 
at home Canadian magazine writers, of whom there are 
many of talent, are compelled to send their wares across the 
line, and that the writer often follows the story. " The leak 
is from the top." 

The state of journalism and of periodical literature in 
Canada being as we have found it, there remains the ques- 
tion of books. 

It happens that in this matter there is an opportunity for 
a fairly exact statistical test. For some years the Bookman 

^ E. g., " To abrogate the postal convention would be to exclude from Canada 
every magazine, newspaper and periodical published in the United States, What 
then should we read? Where are our Canadian magazines? Where are our 
great weekly papers? Where, in Canada, have we anything that can fill the place 
of the American publications that we now buy? Such publications in Canada 
simply do not exist. We have no national monthly magazine. We have no 
weekly papers that are more than local or class publications." Winnipeg Tribune, 
Nov. 24, 1906. 

"The British postmaster-general — or his permanent heads of departments who 
are often more powerful than he — probably does not realize the extent to which 
Canadians obtain their lighter reading matter from the United States. The Amer- 
ican magazine is a marvelous production. It sells here on its comparative 
merits." Toronto World, Dec. 29, 1905. 

" Of Americanizing literature this country is getting altogether too much. 
Every day carload lots of it in the form of newspapers and magazines are dumped 
on our market. This foreign reading matter, as was pointed out yesterday, is 
transported over our railway lines, assorted in our postoffices, forwarded in local 
mail bags and delivered at city homes by letter-carriers, all at the expense of the 
Canadian post-office department, which receives nothing whatever for the service. 
If our postal system were in the hands of a propaganda for establishing in Canada 
the ideas, standards and habits of the United States people, it could not be turned 
to more account for that purpose than it can to-day." Toronto Mail and Em- 
pire, April 26, 1905, 



I06 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

of New York has been publishing every month lists of the 
six best-selling books in each of a number of Americah 
cities, including two Canadian, Toronto and Montreal, as 
well as a summarized list for the whole country. 

In view of the great number and population of the Ameri- 
can cities averaged in it, this general list is substantially that 
for the United States, although the two Canadian places 
contribute their share to its makeup. 

If, therefore, we take one of the Canadian cities, say 
Toronto, as that is the most typically Canadian place it is 
possible to conceive, and compare its list with that for the 
whole country we shall be able to form a fair idea of the 
extent to which the favorite books of Canadians correspond 
with those most widely read in the United States, And if 
by the side of these we can put a list of the books most 
widely read in England at the same time we can judge 
whether the literary taste of Canada leans more toward the 
British or the American side. Unfortunately this last com- 
parison cannot be made with strict accuracy. The London 
Bookman publishes lists of the best-selling books in Eng- 
land, but not exactly on the system adopted by its New 
York namesake. Formerly it gave the names of twenty or 
thirty best-selling books in a lump instead of taking six, 
carefully graded in their exact order, as its American mate 
does. Of late it has taken to classifying books under various 
heads, which of course makes an exact parallel impossible.. 
During the period of the South African war works on that 
subject had a primacy in the English lists which vitiated any 
comparisons. But for a space of twenty-seven months, from 
September, 1900, to December, 1902, inclusive (one month 
being lacking), a fairly trustworthy parallel may be drawn^ 
by taking the first six books on each monthly English list 
and comparing them with the most popular six in Toronta 
and in the United States at large, respectively. 



LITERARY INFLUENCES 107 

A recapitulation of these lists, counting one for every 
time a book appears, gives the following results : 

British American Canadian Foreign 

Books. Books. Books. Books. 

Toronto 47 loi 17 — 

United States 32 123 11 2 

England 140 19 — I 

Or reduced to percentages : 

British American Canadian Foreign 

Books. Books. Books. Books. 

Toronto 28.5 61.2 10.3 — 

United States 19.0 73.2 6.5 1.2 

England 87.5 1 1.9 — 0.6 

It appears, therefore, that in the period considered nearly 
two-thirds of the favorite books in Toronto and more than 
two-thirds of the favorites in the United States were Ameri- 
can, while American books formed less than an eighth of 
the favorites in England. Canadian books formed 10.3 per 
cent of the best-selling lists in Toronto and 6.5 per cent of 
the similar lists in the United States, while in the corre- 
sponding lists in England they did not appear at all. 
Repeatedly the month's roll in Toronto was composed en- 
tirely of American works, but never in a single instance 
entirely of British works, while the list in England was often 
composed exclusively of British but never solely of Ameri- 
can books. 

One significant circumstance was the fact that Mr. George 
Ade's Fables in Slang, which proved totally unintelligible 
in England, and were solemnly gnawed at by Mr. Andrew 
Lang and other British experts as if they had been unde- 
ciphered Etruscan inscriptions, appeared three times in 
the Toronto lists and were later followed there by the 
same author's More Fables, although Mr. Ade's peculiarly 



I08 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

American humor did not gain a footing at the same periods 
even in the general lists of the United States. Toronto's 
liking for Ade was not surprising, for in their slang — that 
most delicate test of a people's mental unity — Canadians and 
Americans are on an identical footing. The same slang 
phrases, drawn from the same occupations, modes of life, 
sports, musical comedy and vaudeville turns, pervade the 
whole North American continent. British slang is utterly 
different, and as alien to Canada as Canadian-American 
slang is to Great Britain. 



CHAPTER X 

Miscellaneous Factors 

In the first half of the nineteenth century the monetary con- 
ditions in Canada were chaotic. The prevailing system was 
based on the so-called "Halifax currency" of pounds, shil- 
lings and pence, but with a pound equivalent to $4 and called 
a "pound currency" in distinction from a pound sterling. 
The smaller denominations had proportionate values — 
twenty cents for a " shilling currency " and ten cents for the 
"six pence currency." But computations in Western 
Canada were frequently made in dollars and in York shill- 
ings, and in early writings various standards were often used 
indiscriminately on the same page. Thus Smith in 185 1 
observes that in Sophiasburg "when the township was first 
settled, land was sold at a shilling an acre. In 18 17 it was 
valued at from $3 to $5 per acre. At the present time, im- 
proved farms would sell at from 6 to 9 pounds per acre," ' 

In August, 1852, the speech from the throne at the open- 
ing of the Parliament of the United Provinces of Upper and 
lower Canada proposed the official adoption of a decimal 
currency.^ The measure was not adopted immediately, but 
the great expansion in the commercial relations between 
Canada and the United States that followed the Reciprocity 
Treaty of 1854 soon cleared the way for it. 

The decimal system was definitely introduced by the Act 
of the Provincial Parliament, 20 Vict., cap, 18, taking effect 



^ W, H, Smith, Canada, Fast, Present and Future, p 263. 
' Cockburn, Political Annals of Canada, p. 340. 



109 



no THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

Dec. 31st, 1857, which provided that all accounts to be ren- 
dered to the government or any public office or department 
should be rendered in dollars and cents. The pound still 
remained legal tender, but the dollar rapidly supplanted it in 
popular use. A law directing the conversion of all postage 
rates into decimals, and the collection of postage in the new 
currency went into effect July i, 1859.' When the various 
provinces came together in the Dominion the monetary 
confusion prevailing in them was described by Earl Carnar- 
von in the House of Lords in these terms (Feb. 19, 1867) : 

" In Canada the pound or the dollar are legal tender. In 
Nova Scotia the Peruvian, Mexican, Columbian dollars are 
all legal ; in New Brunswick British and American coins are 
recognized by law, though I believe that the shilling is taken 
at twenty-four cents, which is less than its value ; in New- 
foundland Peruvian, Mexican, Columbian, old Spanish, are 
all equally legal, whilst in Prince Edward's Island the com- 
plexity of currencies and of their relative value is even 
greater."^ 

Confederation gave a common currency to the whole north- 
ern part of the continent, identical in its standard and denom- 
inations with that prevailing in the United States, The en- 
tire continent north of Mexico, therefore, has been as one in 
this important respect since the resumption of specie pay- 
ments in the United States in 1879. An American firm 
prints the Dominion Government's notes. The only thing 
lacking to absolute monetary unity is a provision legalizing 
the circulation of the money of each in the territory of ^ the 
other. Even without this authority such circulation is gen- 
eral near the border. Canadian coins are freely accepted all 
along the American side of the line, although not in more 
distant places, and American visitors can spend their money 

''■ Report of Postmaster- General, Province of Canada, 1859. 
"Hansard, 3rd Series, vol. 185, pp. 574-575. 



MISCELLANEO US FACTORS 1 1 1 

almost anywhere in Canada. The effect of a common mon- 
etary system in promoting common habits of thought is 
obvious. Americans and Canadians discuss the same busi- 
ness questions in the same terms. The bank clearings of 
Montreal are reported in the same tables with those of New 
York, and subject to direct comparisons. When a Canadian 
wishes to study English financial statistics he has to translate 
them from unfamiliar terms, but in studying American sta- 
tistics he is at home. 

The American magazines, with that flood of advertise- 
ments of American goods of which Canadian manufacturers 
complain, are aided by the fact that their prices are quoted 
in the currency used by their readers in their daily business, 
and orders are not complicated by any annoying questions 
of exchange. Their way has been further smoothed by the 
adoption of the American system of weights in place of the 
British. ^ 

'^INVESTMENTS OF CAPITAL 

While the sharp outlines of the boundary have been 
dimmed by the currents of population that wash continually 
across them, they have been attacked at the same time by 
corresponding currents of capital. The Canadian railroad 
system is largely the creation of American money. 

American investors have built up the coal industry of 
Nova Scotia and the great steel works of Sydney. American 
speculators created the huge Clergue enterprises at Sault 
Ste. Marie. American promoters, having exhausted their 
opportunities on the New York side of Niagara Falls, have 
obtained franchises to deplete the Canadian side. American 
miners have accomplished the greater part of the develop- 
ment of the Klondike. Many of the street railway lines, 
lighting plants and water works of Canadian cities have been 
built by American capital. On the other hand, in 1905 there 
were 92,472 Canadian poHcy-holders in American life-insur- 



112 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

ance companies, carrying insurance to the amount of $i8o,- 
631,886. In 1904, the American companies wrote $36,- 
145,211 of new business in Canada and collected premiums 
from Canadian policy-holders to the extent of $6,536,710. 
In thirty years these policy-holders have paid $85,592,495 
to American companies. 

The natural tendency of a corporation whose operations 
extend on both sides of the line is to treat its entire field as 
a single territory. It shifts men from one part of its system 
to another to suit its own convenience regardless of national 
boundaries. The American railroads operating lines in 
Canada have hosts of employees, domiciled now in one 
country and now in the other. 

Every international corporation is interested in making 
the boundary that bisects its business as inconspicuous as 
possible. It is reported from time to time that the United 
States Steel Corporation is acquiring mills in Canada. If it 
should obtain the same supremacy in the iron and steel in- 
dustry there that it has in that of the United States, the prin- 
cipal influence behind the steel schedules of the Canadian 
and American tariffs would disappear. It would be an ad- 
vantage to the company to supply its customers in Manitoba 
from its Minnesota mills, and its customers in Maine from its 
mills in Cape Breton. If the combination that controls the 
coal mines of Pennsylvania should also secure those of Nova 
Scotia, it would find it convenient to send Pennsylvania coal 
to New York and Nova Scotia coal to Boston. For years 
hardly a day has passed in which the Canadian newspapers 
have not chronicled some new incursion of American capital. 
On the other hand, American stocks are heavily dealt in on 
the Canadian exchanges, the New York quotations are tele- 
graphed to Canadian papers, and thus a counter-stream of 
investment is maintained, all helping to create common finan- 
cial interests on both sides of the boundary. 



MISCELLANEOUS FACTORS 



113 



SPORTS 

In social life the convergence of the Republic and the 
Dominion is very marked. It is no trivial matter that base- 
ball is becoming the national game of Canada instead of 
cricket. It has a very deep significance, as has the fact that 
the native game of lacrosse is not able to hold its own 
against the southern intruder. " It has not one player in 
Canada," regretfully observes the Toronto Mail and Empire, 
" where baseball has a score. Thousands of Toronto peo- 
ple will quit work of an afternoon to applaud two contend- 
ing gangs of salaried aliens at Diamond Park, while as many 
hundreds would not be induced to attend a lacrosse match." 

All over the continent baseball circles, each of several 
hundred miles in diameter, may be drawn, within which the 
various cities play for the local championships. These 
circles lap over each other without any regard to national 
lines, Toronto, Jersey City, Montreal, Baltimore, Provi- 
dence, Newark, Bufifalo and Rochester, play for the champ- 
ionship of their circuit just as if they were all in a single 
State.' When the Eastern League season for 1905 opened 
in Toronto the Ontario Legislature cut short its session for 
the game and the Prime Minister pitched the first ball.^ 

At the opening of the same season of the Western On- 
tario League at St. Thomas the Mayor issued a proclama- 
tion, which was generally obeyed, directing the city to 
observe the day, after three in the afternoon, as a holiday. 
At the appointed time a procession was formed, led by a 
military band, with the contending ball teams on foot, fol- 
lowed by the Aldermen and prominent citizens in automobiles 
and carriages. At the grounds a Judge delivered an elo- 
quent address, the Mayor put on a catcher's uniform, the 

• See Spalding'' s Official Baseball Guide for lists of such leagues. 
' Toronto Mail and Empire, May 6, 1905. 



114 ^^^ AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

County Clerk went to the bat, an Alderman took the umpire's 
place and the Judge pitched a ball. Then the champion- 
ship pennant was hoisted and the regular teams took the 
field/ 

The Canadian newspapers print fuller telegraphic accounts 
of the great baseball contests of the National, the American 
and the Eastern Leagues than they do of the proceedings of 
the British Parliament. The American baseball language, 
which would be entirely unintelligible to an English reader, 
is fully acclimated in the Canadian press. Take for instance 
this typical bit from a four-column illustrated dispatch in the 
Montreal Star of October 14, 1905, describing one of the 
games of the world's championship series between New York 
and Philadelphia : " Hartsel reposed on first with nobody 
out in the eighth. Lord flied to Donlin in the outlying dis- 
tricts. Nothing could escape Devlin, and Davis was a goner 
when he fouled high to that industrious person. Lave Cross 
was more assertive. He whanged a hummer straight to 
centre, and Hartsel hit the trail for third base. Donlin 
fumbled, but Hartsel would have reached third anyway, as 
his feet are shod with wings." If one can imagine the re- 
ception a story of this sort would meet from a London 
editor, and then reflect that it is repeated at length in every 
important newspaper of Canada every day throughout the 
baseball season one might begin to form an opinion on the 
question whether in this particular field of activity, Canadian 
tastes run more to English or American models. " In 
sport," observes the Victoria Times, pensively, "the conti- 
nent is rapidly becoming ' Americanized.' It would appear 
to be useless to attempt to stem the tide, even if it were de- 
sirable to attempt such a thing." " 

^ St. Thomas Times, June i, 1905, 
'May 13, 1905. 



MISCELLANEOUS FACTORS 



115 



MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 

The English rule prohibiting marriage with a deceased 
wife's sister formerly prevailed in Canada. A bill granting 
the same liberty that prevails in the United States passed 
the Dominion Commons in 1880 but was defeated in the 
Senate. It was passed again two years later and became a 
law. In the matter of divorce no two countries could 
appear, at first sight, to be more widely divergent than the 
United States and Canada. In all the States of the Union 
but one, divorces are granted by the courts, and in most 
States for many varying causes. In the principal Canadian 
Provinces the courts have no such power, and people who 
want divorces must get them by special Act of Parliament if 
at all. The result is that divorces in Canada are counted by 
units while in the United States they are counted by thou- 
sands. Thus the great Province of Ontario granted only 
fifty-eight divorces in the thirty-seven years from 1868 to 
1904 inclusive, never more than five in any one year, and in 
eleven of those years it granted none at all. ' 

But the contrast between the two countries in this respect 
is not quite as extreme as it appears on the surface. The 
easy-going American divorce courts have to bear some of 
the sins of their neighbors, as well as of their own con- 
stituents. It is as easy to go to Sioux Falls from Toronto 
as from New York. Nor do Canadians who find their own 
laws too irksome always find it necessary to go so far. 
Many ill-mated couples in Ontario have found Niagara Falls 
nr Buffalo near enough. This state of affairs attracted the 
attention of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the Eighth 
District of New York in the Spring of 1905, and in May of 
that year Justice Daniel J. Kenefick refused to grant a 
divorce to a Toronto man who had acquired a legal residence 

^Statistical Year-Book of Canada, 1904. 



Il6 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

in Niagara Falls a year before and was still doing business 
in Toronto. When questioned afterward he said : 

" For some time past I have been watching closely divorce 
cases in which the principals were married in Canada and 
formerly resided there. From this observation I have 
reached the conclusion that a noticeable percentage of the 
divorce cases tried before this department are brought by 
Canadians, who establish a residence here mainly that they 
may sue for divorce." ' 

Similar opinions were expressed at the meeting of the 
General Synod of the Church of England four months later, 
and the Synod was led to take action looking toward the 
prohibition of the remarriage of divorced persons by the 
Anglican clergy.^ 

CONCLUSION 

The assimilative processes heretofore described might be 
traced into an infinity of detail. The educational system of 
Canada was largely copied from American models in the 
early part of the nineteenth century, and indeed transplanted 
in considerable part by immigrant American teachers, who 
brought Webster's Spelling Book with them and gave Can- 
ada that bent toward American spelling which still persists.3 

The Royal Military College at Kingston, created in 1874, 
was copied from West Point. 4 

The custom of the American pioneers of helping each 
other in their plowing, seeding, harvesting, building barns 
and hauHng logs, by means of social " bees," was equally 
prevalent in Canada, s The American idea of preserving 

1 St. Catharines Standard, May 15, 1905. 
»St. John Globe, Sept. 13, 1905. 

' See Bourinot, Canada During the Victorian Era, in Transactions of the 
Royal Society of Canada, 1897, sec. ii, p. 13, and Canniff, pp. 333-349« 
*Leggo, Administration oj the Earl of Duff erin, p. 207. 
* Collins, Canada Under Lome, p. 396. 



MISCELLANEO US FA CTORS 1 1 7 

notable natural beauties in national parks was consciously 
copied by the Canadian Government. ' 

On a viceregal progress in the West the Marquis of Lome 
was struck by the resemblance among all the new cities of 
the continent, and summarized them in an interesting bit of 
condensed description.^ At the same time he noticed the 
stern-wheel Mississippi and Missouri steamers on the Sas- 
katchewan. 

The preceding Governor-General, the Earl of Dufferin, had 
observed with some concern the continental scope of certain 
undesirable conditions among the children and youth of 
North America — how lacking they were in respect for their 
elders,3 and how the undignified American practice of pub- 
licly calling young ladies by their pet names had spread not 
only through general society, but into the prize lists, the 
rollcalls, and even the newspapers, of Canada,'* 

The American rule of the road, by which vehicles keep to 
the right and railroad trains and street cars run on the right- 
hand tracks, prevails in Canada, instead of the English rule 
of keeping to the left. The street cars, too, are run on the 

1 See speech of the Marquis of Lome at Victoria, B. C, in 1882, Collins, p, 481. 

' " There are the same very wide streets, showing how prodigal the community 
may be of land. There are the same rough buildings of boards, with the front 
run up in a square shape, hiding the gable behind, which would be a much prettier 
thing to show, but it is hidden because the square boarded front gives more room 
for some largely written name or advertisement. There are the same pretentious 
and sometimes very handsome 'blocks,' where a wealthy firm or an enterprising 
speculator has put his capital into bricks, stone and lime. There are the same 
variety of hotels, some great, some small, but all furnished with the largest bar- 
room and entrance hall they can afford to have. There are the same wooden ' side- 
walk ' along both sides of the street, the same car tramway in the roadway, the 
same flight of light springy gigs or buggies, with their tall thin-spoked wheels, 
making it necessary to climb over the spider work before the passenger can be 
seated in the vehicle." Lome's Canadian Life and Scenery, p. 134. 

^Speech to the teachers of McGill Normal School, Jan. 22, 1873. 

* Speech at the Laval Normal School, Quebec, June 27, 1876. Leggo, History 
of the Administration of the Earl of Dufferin, p. 441. 



Il8 THE AMERICANIZATION OF CANADA 

American plan of flat rates instead of the English system of 
fares graded according to distance. 

The legal profession of Canada has been assimilated to that 
of the United States by the abolition of the English distinc- 
tion between barristers and solicitors. 

At least three American holidays have been adopted in 
Canada — Arbor Day, Labor Day and Thanksgiving Day — 
and Decoration Day has been transplanted in a measure. 
Labor Day is celebrated on the same date in Canada as 
in the United States, and an agitation in favor of adopting 
the American date for Thanksgiving would probably have 
been successful but for the fact that it is too late in the 
season to suit Canadian climatic conditions. Arbor Day 
could not be synchronized, since there is no uniformity in 
that respect among the various States of the American Union. 
The Fourth of July is a hoHday that could not, in the nature 
of things, be transferred officially to Canada, but for many 
years it has been celebrated unofficially in the Canadian 
Northwest with almost as much enthusiasm as in the United 
States. The Americans near the border reciprocate by 
joining in the Canadian celebration of Dominion Day. ^ 

^ To take two examples, twenty-one years apart : " • Dominion Day ' ... is 
kept in Canada on July ist, in the same way as the Americans celebrate Inde- 
pendence Day (July 4th). A great deal of good feeling is shown between Amer- 
icans and British Columbians in these days of rejoicing. Many of the former 
come over to British Columbia to celebrate Dominion Day; and the compliment 
is returned by the British Columbians crossing to the other side of the Sound, 
i. e., into the States, to keep Independence Day. It is a true friendly feeling, 
mutual and sincere, and one which I hope may continue." . . . "To-day (July 
4th) is Independence Day in the States and is celebrated almost as much here 
(Victoria, B. C.) as over the boundary." W. Henry Barnaby, Life and Labour 
in the Far, Far West, 1884, pp. 136 and 150. 

" On Fourth of July night the cities and towns of Western Canada are aglow 
with celebrations, and the flash of skyrockets and the twinkling of balloons may 
be seen as far as the eye can reach over the settled prairies." J. Oliver Curwood, 
in World'sWork, Sept., 1905. 



MISCELLANEOUS FACTORS 



119 



The conclusion to which all the converging lines of evid- 
ence unmistakably point is that the Americans and the 
English-speaking Canadians have been welded into one 
people. The French Canadians are of course different from 
both, but even in their case the international boundary is not 
a dividing line. There are nearly two-thirds as many persons 
of pure French Canadian stock in the United States as in all 
Canada, and the density of the French Canadian population 
of Massachusetts is over ten times as great as that of Quebec. 
The boundary of French Canada runs down the Ottawa and 
southward to Long Island Sound, not easterly and westerly 
along the forty-fifth parallel and the St. Lawrence. But 
French Canada is merely a little island in the midst of a sea of 
English-speaking people, of diverse origins indeed, but unified 
by a common language, common institutions and common 
habits of life. The English-speaking Canadians protest that 
they will never become Americans — they are already Amer- 
icans without knowing it. 



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120 



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VITA 

Samuel E, Moffett, the writer of this dissertation, was 
born at St. Louis, Mo,, Nov. 5th, i860. He was graduated 
from the Academic Department of the State Normal School 
at Fredonia, N. Y., in 1878, spent a year in private study in 
Europe, and covered most of the literary and part of the 
agricultural course at the Univerity of California in 1881-82' 
He entered newspaper work in 1885, and became editoral 
writer successively on the San Francisco Evening Post, 
the San Francisco Examiner, the New York Jotirnal and 
the New York World, with an interval of two years as 
Washington correspondent of the Examiner. 

He was for a short time managing editor of the Cosmo- 
politan Magazine, and is now department editor of Collier's 
Weekly. In 1892-94 he wrote "The Tariff, What it is and 
What it Does," " Chapters on Silver" and " Suggestions on 
Government." He has been a contributor to the Nineteenth 
Century, ihe Review of Reviews d.nd the New Liberal Review 
of London, the American Review of Reviews, the Political 
Science Quarterly, the Annals of the American Academy, the 
Forum, McClure's, the Cosmopolitan, Munsey's, Collier's, 
Harper's Weekly, the Independent, the Delta Kappa Epsilon 
Quarterly, and various other American periodicals. In 
1899 he wrote an authorized biographical sketch of Mark 
Twain, which is included in the definitive edition of the latter's 
works. In the same year, while still engaged in editorial 
work, he took up studies at Columbia, receiving the degree 

125 



126 ^^TA 

of A. B. in 1900, and that of A. M. under the Faculty of 
Political Science in 1901. He is a member of the American 
Political Science Association, the American Academy of 
Political and Social Science, the American Social Science 
Association, the American Economic Association and the 
National Geographic Society. 



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